Nick Brown is the Founder and CEO of accelerate agency, a SaaS SEO & content agency. Working with enterprise and scale-up brands.
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What’s the most important part of SEO for SaaS companies? I’ve got an answer, and it’s probably not what you’d expect. But before I get to that, the first thing we must establish is that every part of SEO is really important:
• Good technical SEO encourages search engines to fully digest your website’s content.
• In a similar way, on-site SEO encourages search engines to give priority to your most important pages.
• Expertly written SEO content is what the search engines serve to their users.
• High-authority links help search engines determine which content is most important.
Because SaaS is arguably one of the most competitive SEO niches, there is no part of SEO that SaaS companies can afford to ignore. If you let any part of your SaaS website’s SEO slide, it will quickly be cast into oblivion (also known as Page 2 of Google’s search results).
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Here’s an example:
If you have a SaaS company selling productivity software, consistently strong SEO rankings can drive a lot of sales. Your competitors know this and will seize on any opening that allows them to leapfrog past you for valuable keywords. Now, imagine your website is built on an out-of-date system that makes technical SEO harder, and your Google PageSpeed is registering a paltry 85/100. This would be a huge problem. You may think your website speed seems fine, but remember how competitive SEO for SaaS is. Relying on other SEO strengths isn’t enough. You may have top-drawer content, but your competition will too. Your site might have a flawless internal-linking structure, but in SEO for SaaS, that’s just expected. And your website might have thousands of links from highly relevant website domains, but guess who else will too? If a competitor with a modern content management system can get their speed up into the mid-90s while yours is in the mid-80s, Google will rank your competition above you. This will result in your company losing huge amounts of potential revenue.
The key factor here is the highly competitive nature of SEO for SaaS. If you were operating on a much less competitive SEO landscape, like trying to rank for a local hairdresser or locksmith search, aiming for perfection for every part of SEO wouldn’t be so important. Actually, that word—“perfection”—is key. You can get close to perfection with most parts of SEO. It’s the last remaining part where the competition is endless that SaaS companies really need to focus on: high-authority links.
There is no perfect number of links.
In the example I discussed above, I talked about website speed. The standard metric most people in SEO use is Google PageSpeed, which is measured on a 100-point scale. Getting a website above 90 can be a real challenge, and getting it above 95 always requires a lot of work. I’ve never seen a website actually reach 100 (even Google.com usually gets a 97). My point is that once you get your website to around 95–97, there’s not much benefit in continued effort.
The same is true for the rest of technical and on-site SEO. Getting these close to perfect is difficult, but possible. Once you’ve done this, the goal should be just to maintain this level of excellence.
SEO content is slightly different. It’s always possible to write more content, but writing too much content can actually be a problem. If you’re targeting the keyword “productivity software,” you want to have one page that Google thinks covers this topic, not two (and certainly not three or four). Multiple pages targeting the same keyword confuses search engines and will cause your position in search results to drop like a stone.
Links are different, though. How many high-authority links do you need to outrank your SaaS competitors in search results? There is no set answer.
Unlike technical SEO, on-site SEO or SEO content, there really is no finish line when it comes to links. If your website has 3,678 high-quality links, there’s nothing to stop you from getting a 3,679th.
All that really matters when it comes to the links is that your website has more high-quality, highly relevant links than your competition.
High-quality link acquisition is like an arms race.
What you can never be sure of is how many links you need to reach the top in a search result and stay here. However many you get, your competitors will keep trying to get more and pass you. Like an arms race, the goal is not to reach some end point, but to stay ahead of everyone else.
There are three factors that contribute to the value of links for SEO:
• Quantity: How many inbound links does your website have? In general terms, more is better.
• Quality: How authoritative are the websites that link to your website? A link from a widely respected source and written by an industry expert will count more than a link from a newly created blog.
• Relevance: Is the link from a website that is relevant to your industry? For productivity SaaS, a link from a website that regularly covers business tech will do much more to boost your rankings than a link from a recipe-sharing website.
Acquiring thousands of high-authority links from highly relevant websites is a huge challenge. I recently wrote another article about this process, and it can be very difficult to do this effectively without expert agency support.
Rest assured, in a highly competitive SEO environment like SaaS, however difficult getting links is, some of your competitors will be very good at this. If they surge past you, all other factors being equal, they will likely start ranking above you in search results. The question is: Will you let them?
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Author: Nick Brown, Forbes Councils Member
