7 Biggest SaaS SEO Mistakes to Avoid
SEO has one of the highest ROIs in SaaS marketing.
But if you do it wrong, it can end up costing a fortune with nothing to show for it.
I’ve been helping SaaS companies create high-performing SEO strategies and publish content that ranks and converts for many years. If there’s one thing my experience has taught me, it’s that the same problems occur across all different industries and business models.
This guide breaks down seven of the most common SaaS SEO mistakes I see software companies make, and a few best practices for avoiding them.
1. Neglecting a customer-first approach
A good SaaS SEO strategy relies on data. However, data doesn’t always tell the whole story—or the right one.
For example, keyword research might reveal a high search volume for a phrase related to the industry your software serves. But that might be because that phrase is part of an exam question or the name of a company.
In either case, it’s unlikely to generate any leads.
The better approach is to listen to your customers and learn which of their biggest pain points your product can solve. This will give you a much more informed basis from which to conduct keyword research.
2. Not starting with low-hanging fruit
Low-hanging fruit in SaaS SEO are the keywords and questions customers search when they’re ready to buy—otherwise known as bottom-funnel queries.
While top-funnel and mid-funnel content have their place in a marketing strategy, the more effective approach is to begin at the bottom. This is especially important if you have minimal resources.
Some low-hanging fruit keyword formulas for SaaS websites include:
[product feature] software
[use case] software
best [feature or use case] software
[feature or use case] software demo
[feature or use case] software features
software for [customer problem]
If you’re selling warehouse management software, for example, you might target keywords like ‘warehouse management software’, ‘order picking software’, and ‘software for wholesalers’.
3. Publishing poor-quality content
With the rise of AI-powered marketing tools, the ability to create content at scale has never been easier. Unfortunately, 100% AI-written content is useless and unlikely to ever rank.
I’m not bashing the use of AI tools in SaaS SEO. Used correctly, they can be very helpful. But you shouldn’t rely on them to do all the research, writing, and editing for you. Nor should you hire the cheapest content writer you can find on sites like Upwork or Fiverr.
Google rewards websites that publish high-quality, original, informative, and valuable content. It’s also much more likely to drive conversions than some AI-regurgitated article your customers can’t relate to.
Take the time to learn the essentials of best-practice SEO content—or hire someone who will—to ensure your money and time are not wasted on content that won’t convert.
4. Trying to do everything at once
It can be tempting to create an utterly comprehensive SaaS SEO strategy that speaks to every user journey, customer pain point, and stage in the sales funnel.
But unless you have the resources to produce vast quantities of high-quality content quickly, this is generally a bad idea.
It’s better to pick a single strategy that focuses on one area at a time.
Here’s why:
The more content you have on one topic, the more authority Google will credit you with for that topic.
Early wins are critical, and doing a little bit of everything means it will be a long time before any one thing is reliably delivering leads.
There’s a risk you’ill have less budget and fewer resources available in the future. If you start a million projects, most of them will have to be abandoned when budget cuts happen, making all prior efforts a waste of time.
Start with one topical area in which you wish to build authority. Focus your content efforts around that topic until you have built a solid cluster of related pages, then move on to the next one.
5. Not updating existing content
I know from experience that refreshing existing content often has a bigger impact on SEO than publishing new content.
Yet most companies hardly ever do it, if they do it at all.
If you’ve been publishing content for a while, there’s a good chance you have some quick-win opportunities hiding in your underperforming pages. And optimizing old content typically returns results faster than it takes for new content to start delivering them.
A good place to start is your pages that rank in positions 4–16 in the search results for their target keyword. Over 50% of all Google search clicks go to the top three results in any SERP, so even a small optimization (such as changing an SEO title or adding a new H2 section) can be enough to push those pages into the top three.
6. Ignoring your competitors
Whether out of spite or ignorance, far too many SaaS companies make the mistake of ignoring what their competitors are doing regarding SEO.
The reality is that competitors can be your best source for content ideas.
Take a look at their blogs, use case landing pages, and feature pages to see which keywords they’re targeting. Pay extra attention to those competitors sitting at the top of the market, as they’ll likely have large SEO budgets.
You can also use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to analyze which websites your competitors are getting backlinks from and any keyword gaps you might have.
7. Prioritising high-volume, low-intent keywords
This should probably be number one on this list of SaaS SEO mistakes because it’s the one I see beginner SEO teams make most often.
Here’s why this is a bad idea:
A high search volume has no direct relation to the purchasing cycle.
There can be many reasons for high-volume searches, and targeting these keywords can deoptimize your website for the high-intent topics your customers are searching.
Vanity metrics, such as clicks and impressions, don’t reflect how effectively your SEO efforts are creating revenue for the company.
It’s easy to forget about your real objectives when you celebrate fake wins, such as a large increase in traffic from a low-intent keyword.
Instead, focus on the keywords that are most likely to result in new customers. These are the ones related to customer pain points your problem solves, features and benefits of your software, and various stages in the buyer’s journey.
5 best practices for preventing SaaS SEO mistakes
To avoid making the SaaS SEO mistakes mentioned above, here are five ways to ensure your strategy is designed to increase revenue and generate leads.
1. Create a cohesive SaaS SEO strategy
You fix a lot of SaaS SEO mistakes with a strategy that aligns your business objectives with your content.
This can be achieved by thinking of your product as the spider in the centre of a web. Each piece of content becomes a new strand that connects customer pain points with product features and use cases.
At once you can educate your customers about their problems and demonstrate how your product solves them. A cohesive strategy ensures there is content to match each step in the various buyer journeys of your ICP.
2. Use the right people and tools for the job
A lot of time and money is wasted on underresourced content marketing.
SaaS SEO needs to be done the right way because the software market is highly competitive. Additionally, SaaS customers are unlikely to invest in something they don’t understand or return to a website that gives a poor experience.
Whether you hire an agency, work with freelancers, or employ an in-house SEO specialist, make sure they know exactly what they’re doing and have access to the SaaS SEO tools that ensure efficient, best-practice work.
3. Don’t forget about technical SEO
While you probably don’t need a full-time technical SEO specialist in the early days, it helps to cover the basics.
Avoid technical SaaS SEO mistakes by:
Following best-practice website hierarchy with a clear, logical site structure.
Using concise URLs that contain keywords and separating words with a hyphen.
Compressing images and minimizing JavaScript and CSS for fast page load times.
Optimizing meta tags, SEO titles, image names, and alt text.
Avoiding duplicate content.
If you’re not confident with basic technical SEO, consider hiring an agency or specialist to perform a one-off technical SEO audit.
4. Focus on generating leads, not impressions
Don’t get shiny-object syndrome fawning over traffic if it doesn’t drive lead generation. Align your SaaS SEO strategy with your business goals and focus your efforts on the content that leads to revenue for the company.
5. Use analytics to identify SEO opportunities
Regularly monitor SEO performance to identify optimization opportunities and better understand which content drives the most commercial value for the company.
In addition to search performance, it’s worth analyzing:
The journey site visitors take on your website
Which pages drive the most conversions
Average on-page user time
Secondary keywords your content is ranking for
Avoid mistakes with a SaaS SEO expert
As an experienced SaaS SEO content specialist, I’ve made (and learned from) nearly every mistake in the book. If you’re looking for an advantage to accelerate your content performance, I can help.
Reach out today to learn more about how I can help you plan, write, edit, and optimize high-performing content that drives more sales.
