Software-as-a-service (SaaS) demand is increasing rapidly and shows no signs of slowing down. Although Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) produces strong results, adding SEO to the strategy is critical to raising organic traffic and increasing the website’s domain authority, which is one of the essential metrics for search engines and has a long-term return value.
Considering that search engines account for approximately 93 percent of all website traffic, it is safe to assume that many of your potential consumers are turning to one of them to discover solutions to their problems.
But with all the SEO factors, where to start and what to focus on? To assist you, we have created the Ultimate SaaS SEO Checklist for 2023, which includes steps to help you rank higher in search results and attract more clients each month.
So if you want a higher Google ranking in 2023, this SaaS SEO Checklist is the only one you’ll need.
Without further ado, let’s dive in!
SEO for SaaS: Your Complete Checklist
Here’s what will be covered in this checklist:
- SEO Basics Checklist
- SaaS Keyword Research Checklist
- On-page SaaS SEO Checklist
- Content Checklist
- Technical SaaS SEO Checklist
- Off-Page SaaS SEO Checklist
1. SEO Basics Checklist
It takes a lot of persistence and back-end work to rank #1 in the SERPs; it is not an easy feat. However, we used this checklist to boost our client’s organic traffic by 350%.
1. Setting up Google Search Console
It’s nearly impossible to create the ideal SaaS SEO strategy if you are unaware of how your site performs in Google searches. And Google Search Console can be of assistance to you in this regard.
You may track the performance of your keywords, measure the traffic to your site, and troubleshoot problems using this free web tool from Google.
2. Setting up Google Analytics
Another free analytics tool from Google, Google Analytics, allows you to track the origins of your site visitors and examine how they interact with it. You may evaluate the effectiveness of marketing efforts using the data given by Google Analytics, and you can also adjust the operation of your website to make the most of them.
3. Removing Duplicate Content
Multiple similar or identical pages can confuse Google bot and damage your ranking if you have them. Ideally, your website should not have any equal sections of content. Utilize a unique tag to identify the master version of a page and any pages identical to it, however, if you must use them for distinct reasons.
4. Submitting a Sitemap
This is to help search engine crawlers understand and locate the web pages they should crawl and index. For example, if you’re using Yoast or Rank Math, you can get a sitemap available and live, meaning you only need to submit it within Google Search Console. Or else, you can use XML Sitemaps Generator to generate one.
5. Creating a Robots.txt File
Crawlers follow instructions on how to crawl your website by a robots.txt file. In addition, it can instruct crawlers on which pages they should and shouldn’t index. If you’re using WordPress, Yoast or Rank Math can use to update the robots.txt file. If not, you must manually create it in your https://www.domain.com/robots.txt.
2. SaaS Keyword Research Checklist
Ranking for the right keywords will have a crucial impact on your lead generation as 93% of the time, an online session has initiated with a keyword search.
The cornerstone of SaaS SEO builds on selecting the appropriate keywords. Regarding SaaS SEO, you should concentrate on two types: transactional keywords (used by prospective customers to buy a service). And informational keywords (used by searchers to obtain information) are used to find information.
Here’s a checklist of the essential keyword research tasks you need to accomplish for better SEO results.
1. Find a Couple of Seed Keywords
Finding seed keywords is the idea-generating stage. But, first, write down the keywords, keywords, and synonyms that you (as a customer) would use to find your product or service in a search engine.
2. Keyword Research Using Google Keyword Planner
Google’s very own Keyword generator – Google Keyword Planner or Keyword.io will help you understand what keywords to target based on the search volume and competition. Since the data source is Google itself – it’s highly reliable.
3. Keyword Research Using Competitor Analysis
Another good strategy for creating your list of relevant keywords is to research the keywords your competitors are ranking for. However, given that not all of your competitors use SaaS SEO, you should first pinpoint the top two or three companies utilizing keywords associated with your software.
Once you’ve got a couple of seed keywords or at least a primary competitor in mind, check the keywords they are currently ranking for using Ahrefs or SEMrush.
4. Understanding Keyword Difficulty
Use SEMrush or Ahrefs to learn more about the keyword difficulty.
Enter the keyword you want to rank for in the Keyword Explorer in Ahrefs or the Keyword Overview in SEMrush. This will give you an understanding of how challenging it is to rank on Page 1 for that specific keyword.
You’ll have a hard time ranking for competitive keywords as a beginner in the digital world, so keep searching for less-competitive keywords.
5. Creating a Keyword Sheet
Now that you’ve got a large number of relevant keywords using the above strategies, you should create a keyword research sheet that you’ll be using for all your further keyword-based optimizations. Here’re the things you should include in the keyword sheet.
- Your target keywords.
- Their monthly search volume.
- Keyword difficulty level.
- The status of each keyword. This includes whether or not a keyword has already been used and its present stage in the utilization process.
- Inter-related pieces of content (topic clusters) are developed using the keywords.
- CPC (cost-per-click) of each keyword.
3. On-page SaaS SEO Checklist
Here are four tips to improve the on-page SEO performance of your website.
1. Using Short URLs with Keywords
The URLs for each page must be simple for search engines to find and comprehend. The rankings of your pages in the SERPs will eventually suffer if you use excessively complex and complicated URLs. Users may also unintentionally break links, which results in broken URLs and a bad user experience.
For example:
2. Optimizing Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
The title tag and meta description are two fundamental aspects of on-page SEO. To meet the individual needs of your consumers, make sure to include searcher intent keywords in your title tag optimization. These keywords can generate using keyword research. The topics of the related pages should also mention the title tags, along with the exact crucial keywords you used in the copy, URL, meta description, and image alt attributes of those pages.
Keep meta descriptions to 160 characters or less, contain your primary keyword, include a call-to-action, make them actionable, and highlight the page’s topic when optimizing them.
3. Optimizing Images
The first step is to include images relevant to the topic you’re discussing. Second, to make an image more accessible for the search engines to interpret, include your main keyword in the file name.
Choosing the appropriate image format comes next. Choose JPEG and PNG (both offer high-quality outcomes with small file sizes) (ideal for preserving background transparency using a larger file size). Finally, use alt tags that describe the content of images, which can help your site get better rankings in the SERPs.
3. Fixing Keyword Cannibalization Issues
The keyword cannibalization issue occurs when the same keyword is targeted to rank several pages. This has several negative impacts, such as decreasing the page authority, decreasing its value, and changing its SERP rankings.
Create a list of all your URLs and related keywords to address keyword cannibalization issues. Fix duplicate entries as soon as you detect them, especially on essential sites. You can employ various strategies, such as creating new landing pages, locating new keywords, combining numerous pages into one (if they aren’t sufficiently distinctive), and using 301 redirects.
4. SaaS Content Checklist
Producing high-value content won’t boost your SEO efforts Unless you optimize it. In simple words, content optimization is about optimizing your SaaS site’s content for search engines.
Let’s look at some effective methods to achieve this.
1. Using Skyscraper Technique
To use this technique, you must first identify a compelling piece of industry-related information. After that, you must develop something even better and do everything possible to spread the word about the new work.
The skyscraper technique, when used well, can significantly help raise your site’s ranks.
However, when building the new piece, you must take the following things into account:
- First, the audience must demand the original work to embrace the new creation.
- You must develop a distinctive perspective or provide something new that assists readers in learning something new.
2. Writing a Proper-Formatted Content
Ensure to employ your core keyword or a close variation once in the first 150 words of your properly formatted content that is longer than 300 words per page. Try to include the term or a close variation in one of the page’s H2 or H3 headings.
Don’t copy and paste the material; use Grammarly to check for plagiarism after creating it.
3. Creating In-Depth Content
The term “in-depth content” describes articles that are thorough and of high quality. This means you should provide content that is unique, incredibly thorough and contains information that has been thoroughly researched. In addition, the article shouldn’t be primarily about promoting your products or company. Instead, it must collect insightful data from reliable sources.
Therefore, you could want to write something like “A Comprehensive Guide to Building a SaaS Application,” which covers all the phases in the procedure, rather than anything like “3 Steps to Build a SaaS Application.” Usually, this kind of content is evergreen and continues to benefit readers over time.
4. Make Content Interactive (Using Images, Videos, Infographics)
Visitors are drawn to and naturally captivated by visually appealing material, which helps them comprehend the message and what lies behind it. Additionally, readers find it far simpler to remember visual content than text-only stuff. So, it is a recommendation to use different forms of multimedia in your content:
- Images
- Charts
- Infographics
- Visual Content
- Videos
It will help you rank better.
5. Optimization of internal links
Although internal links don’t carry as much weight as external links, they are nevertheless essential for the success of your SaaS SEO. Therefore, you should perform a site audit to identify any broken internal links and fix them by eliminating the dead link or changing the target URL to optimize your internal links.
6. One H1 Tag Per Page
The H1 tag is the main heading of your content, so it’s logical to have just one H1 tag per page. Your site audit report would have generally flagged this, so make sure you resolve the issue as soon as possible.
Include the page’s main target keyword in the H1 tag.
5. Technical SaaS SEO Checklist
Technical SEO ensures users can still easily navigate your SaaS site and that search engines can readily understand and rank it. Utilize these tried-and-true technical SEO tips to improve the infrastructure of your website and increase traffic.
1. Using 301 Redirects
Using a 301 redirect has the goal of notifying the browser that a page has been moved permanently to a new location so that it can route users there. Search engine optimizers can switch to a new domain, redirect dynamic URLs to their engine-friendly equivalents, and avoid duplicate content problems.
The simplest way to install a 301 redirect is to make changes to your website’s.htaccess file. In addition, optimizers can use the free Redirection plugin for WordPress to add 301 redirects.
2. Improving the Page Load Speed
Since 2010, page speed has been a key ranking factor for Google. To emphasize the significance of page speed, Google launched the “Speed” update. If you’re curious about how a slow page load time impacts your website, look at the statistics below.
There are several methods to improve page load speed. Some of the most common ones include compressing and optimizing your images, switching to a performance-optimized hosting solution, caching your web pages, enabling browser caching, and reducing the redirects.
3. Creating the Right URL Structure
Creating properly-formatted, SEO-friendly URL structures is important to help your users and search engines understand them. As a result, both the user experience on your site and its SERP rankings are supported by it.
It would be best if you first concentrated on making a straightforward and sensible URL structure. Additionally, try to remove dates from blog posts, use lowercase words, remove stop words, and include important keywords. Finally, every time you modify or alter a URL, add a 301 redirect so that users forward to the new URL.
4. Using Schema Markup
Structured data, also known as schema markup, help search engines comprehend your website’s content. In turn, this enables them to give their visitors more accurate information and allows your website to Rank higher for various types of content and gain more visibility.
Use Google’s Rich Results Test to implement Schema, so if you are not already using structured data, start using it ASAP as it helps your organic listings stand out on the SERPs.
5. Finding and Fixing 404 Errors
When a user tries to visit one of your pages, but it is not available on your server, they get a 404 error. This not only degrades user experience but also lowers your website’s ranks. A 404 error frequently results from removing a page from a website or relocating a page to a different URL.
You can use a 301 redirect to reroute the page and restore deleted pages to resolve 404 errors.
6. Check the HTML to Text Ratio
Ensure that at least 25% of the source code for your website is text and not HTML. It’s easy. Your pages will be more relevant to Google and rank better due to more content. The results of a site audit will highlight this.
6. Off-page SaaS SEO Checklist
Off-page SEO will support search engines in determining your site’s authority, value, and level of trust. For example, one of Google’s most important ranking factors is backlinks, and SaaS companies benefit from this.
1. Guest Posting
You may publish a great guest post on reputable websites in your field by using rich and compelling content on independent websites like Medium and LinkedIn. In addition to content, you should produce infographics about your SaaS, such as those that explain “How To Use XYZ” and “Problems XYZ Solve.”
You can use Google online searches and reverse-engineer competitor backlink profiles to uncover opportunities for guest blogging. You can even use reverse engineering to track down the websites that specific authors are sending their guest posts to see if they’d be interested in receiving written contributions from you.
2. Podcasting
Podcasts can be an excellent source of backlinks, just like guest posting. They are powerful ways to communicate with a larger audience about your SaaS solution that significantly improves your target users’ lives. You might even use podcasts to discuss your innovative idea or exciting case studies in the SaaS industry.
3. Broken Link Building
Broken links on websites are something that nobody likes. However, many resource pages and websites provide links to resources that are no longer available. If you discover a broken link on a website relevant to your target audience, you may alert the webmaster to the issue and request that they link to your content instead.
This will give these webmasters a contemporary and relevant piece of content to replace their broken links with, and you’ll get a backlink in the process.
4. Conduct a Link Intersect Analysis
Check the Link Intersect report by adding your competitors to check if they linked to the domain you want to target to see if you are missing out on link opportunities that your competitors are taking advantage of.
If so, there may be a greater probability that they will also backlink to your website. Link intersect analysis reveals chances for instant gains. Reaching out to them will be the next step once you have a complete list.
5. Design Link-worthy Assets
You’ll need to produce a wide variety of information worth linking to, from infographics, videos, and images to charts and visual content. Along with being thoroughly researched and filled with detailed information, your content should not be promotional and be audience-focused to be link-worthy.
Additionally, it will be more likely to be shared and linked if you can ensure it offers the readers meaningful takeaways, such as practical advice or solutions to their problems. Evergreen content is more likely to earn you long-lasting, high-quality backlinks than content focused on current events.
Final Thoughts
Paying attention to your use of methods as well as the situations in which they are appropriate is the key to success in search engine optimization. This checklist’s objective is to assist you in comprehending SEO for SaaS and utilizing it to expand your SaaS business. With the help of this Saas SEO checklist, you’ll have all the knowledge required to Google-optimize your website. Start ranking now.
