SaaS SEO plays a huge role in creating a successful SaaS growth marketing campaign. That’s why you need to tick all the boxes regarding your SEO strategy. One of the most important aspects to get right from the start is technical SEO.
What is SEO?
Your tech company is gearing up to do big things. You’ve got a great product, the right market fit, and a USP that beats the competition. You’re certain customers will be lining up once they know about your brand.
But therein lies the problem: How will they know where to find you? With over 3 billion Google searches conducted every day, surely there are many potential customers looking for what you have to offer. But without top-notch SEO, they may end up getting lost along the way (or worse, taking a detour straight to your competitors).
SEO helps search engines find, index, and serve up your web pages to your target audience. Without SEO, your chances of being found dwindle to, well…around 1 in 3 billion. SEO can be a complex process that includes strategy-building, technical SEO fixes, and on-page and off-page optimization. SEO for technology companies is critical to your brand’s success, but if you aren’t an SEO expert (and don’t have one on staff), you’re going to need some help and support. Here’s why you need an SEO agency for technology companies and how to find the best fit for you.
What is SaaS technical SEO you ask?
Technical SEO is a branch of SEO that focuses on optimizing the technical aspects of your SaaS website. Doing so ensures that your site can be properly crawled and indexed by search engines, while also being more accessible to users.
What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO refers to the tactics used to ensure a website meets the technical standards and requirements of search engines with the goal of earning organic rankings and traffic.
Think of it this way: If websites are the students and Google is the teacher, a website that is correctly optimized by following technical SEO best practices will be the teacher’s pet and receive preferential treatment on search result pages (SERPs).
Technical SEO is built around three distinct actions of search engines: crawling, rendering, and indexing.
- Crawling: Every search engine has bots it deploys to crawl your webpages. How and what is crawled on your site can be managed by using a robots.txt file.
- Rendering: This is what happens when the code used on your pages is rendered by a browser and delivered to the user in a format that is easy to view and understand. Every webpage you visit has been rendered to look and function the way it does because of its code.
- Indexing: After a page has been crawled and rendered, it is indexed and the information it contains is stored for future use. Managing what is indexed is usually a higher priority than managing what is crawled, as it contributes more to how your pages perform in search results.
Why prioritize technical SEO strategies? Because a properly optimized site that is able to be indexed by search engines is essential for your pages to show up in search results. You could have the best product and the best content, but if your technical SEO is lacking, potential customers won’t be able to find your website organically.
High SERP rankings are especially important for SaaS companies that face fierce competition because 90% of searchers click on a site that appears on the first page of their results.
On the search engines’ front, technical SEO ensures better crawlability and indexation, resulting in better rankings. For users, optimizing the technical aspects of your site leads to better user experience (UX), resulting in higher CTRs, dwell times, and conversions.
Optimizing your website’s technical aspects is essential to ranking, driving traffic, and growing your SaaS business.
SaaS Technical SEO Is Different
Technical SEO is just one part of SEO for SaaS companies. Think of SEO as the full pie and technical SEO as one slice — albeit a very important slice. SEO has four pillars: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, and content.
On-page SEO refers to optimizing webpages and content for search engines and visitors, including title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs. Rather than making optimizations to a website directly, off-page SEO refers to external tactics aimed at increasing search rankings, including backlinking, guest posting, and social media.
Content is the heart of SEO and refers to the pages, blog posts, guides, videos, etc. that are created to align with potential buyers’ search intent and target a company’s relevant keywords.
When it comes to SEO, it can be tempting to take generic SEO best practices and apply them to your SaaS site. Doing this will cripple your efforts and result in a wasted budget. This is because SaaS technical SEO is different from, say, B2C SEO. Here are a few unique issues SaaS companies face when competing in SEO:
Lack of Internal Resources for Early-stage Companies
Unearthing technical SEO issues is tough and requires technical expertise. This can be costly, and not all early-stage startups can afford the resources required for this.
Pressure from Investors/Leadership to Move Quickly
Success in SaaS depends on the speed at which you move. This involves everything from product development to launch. It also involves the speed at which you execute your SEO.
Unfortunately, SEO can’t be rushed. The best you can do is optimize every element, from on-page SEO to off-page SEO to your technical SEO and then give your strategy time to start producing results.
Because of this, investors and the company’s leadership can put pressure on SEOs for faster results.
Competitors Prioritize Rapid Growth
SaaS is an extremely competitive industry. That’s why you’ll discover that your competitors prioritize rapid growth, as should you. By going all out on implementing SaaS SEO best practices, you’ll be in a better position to get faster wins.
5 Free & Simple Technical SEO Tools To Make Your Life Easier
Because of the technical nature of technical SEO, it’s impossible to do it manually. Instead, you need some SaaS SEO tools to help you go under the hood of your site and see what to improve. Let’s briefly look at some of the simple technical SEO tools you should add to your SEO toolbox to make your life easier.
Semrush
Semrush is an all-encompassing SEO platform that companies use for keyword research, rank tracking, link building, and content optimization as well as technical SEO audits that look at crawlability, page load speed, and internal linking issues.
Ahrefs
Similar to Semrush, Ahrefs is an on-page, off-page, and technical SEO tool all in one. Its technical SEO audit features scans your site for issues related to performance, HTML tags, social tags, content quality, incoming links, outgoing links, and external pages. You’ll also get recommendations on how to fix any issues.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is a powerful SaaS technical SEO tool every SEO or marketer should have in their arsenal. It offers various useful performance reports to help you fine-tune your website, ensuring it’s at its optimum.
Key Features
- Sitemap submission
- Penalty reviews
- Backlink analysis
- Troubleshooting errors
- Page position tracking
The best part of GSC is that it’s 100% free.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is another powerful tool designed to make technical SEO way easier. It’s an SEO crawler you can use run deep crawls of your SaaS website, making it easy for you to run technical SEO audits of your site.
Key Features
- Broken link checker
- Log analysis
- Sitemap generator
- Review robots and directives
Screaming Frog also integrates with Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Page Speed APIs.
Free Google Tools
A crucial element of SaaS technical SEO is page speed. Page Speed Insights (PSI) is another powerful tool from Google designed to help you monitor your site’s speed and offer recommendations on improving poor page speed.
Key Features
- Mobile and desktop analysis
- Lab and field data testing
- Core Web Vitals assessment
With Page Experience now a huge ranking factor, Page Speed Insights is an excellent SaaS technical SEO tool to help ensure both users and search engines are happy with your site.
The Rich Results Testing Tool enables you to see if rich results can be generated for your page. Rich results are non-text elements like images, ratings, and prices that enhance a search result and make it stand out to searchers.
Why Do Tech Companies Need SEO Services?
SEO for B2B tech companies plays a vital role in a brand’s overall success. It will improve your SERP (search engine results page) rankings, build trust and authority, and align your brand with your ideal buyer’s search intent. Ultimately, SEO will drive results for your brand, but only if it’s done right.
Organic search is a powerful tool for your brand and your marketing team, but with more than 90 percent of all web pages getting no organic traffic, there’s a lot of room for improvement. Finding an SEO agency for technology companies is the quickest and most efficient way to reap all the rewards of a good SEO strategy. But with an endless supply of agencies out there, how do you narrow the field?
5 Features to Look for in an SEO Agency for Tech Companies
In the tech world, SEO is acknowledged as a necessity. So much so that a majority of tech companies have an SEO manager on staff.
However, not all tech companies have the resources to support an SEO team or even an individual SEO expert in house. You might find yourself in the same situation. Perhaps you’re a startup just trying to find your footing in the market. Or you’re realizing that hiring in house comes with a lot of extra costs and considerations. Whatever your reason, an SEO agency for B2B tech companies will give you the results you want…if you know what to look for.
1. Industry Expertise
You can’t expect an SEO agency that doesn’t have experience with tech brands to deliver the best results. Look for an agency that specializes broadly in SEO for technology companies, whether it’s SaaS, fintech, or startups. Make sure their portfolio is packed with brands you recognize and that they offer case studies and testimonials to prove their success.
2. Results-Based SEO
Do you want more leads, traffic, conversions, or overall growth in revenue? Maybe all-of-the-above? Be sure prospective agencies can show exactly how they’ve improved clients’ KPIs with hard data. When vetting agencies, look for transparency when it comes to sharing how they track, measure, and report results.
3. Customized SEO Strategy
An SEO strategy is the backbone that supports all of the SEO work done for your brand. A good strategy will outline every element of SEO, from technical to on-page and off-page, and will most often pull in your other marketing channels, like content and lead gen.
4. Full-Service SEO
A robust SEO strategy, as mentioned above, will work cross-channel. You’ll need optimized content to ensure successful SEO, and you’ll want your strategy to inform other efforts, like lead gen, social media, and email. A la carte options may sound appealing (and cost-effective), but for a growing tech company, a full-service agency will ensure you’re covered.
5. Reporting
Visibility is important when you’re launching an SEO strategy. You want to know how the recommended tactics are being implemented and how they’re performing. Discuss communication with prospective agencies from the start, and find out how frequently they make reports and what information will be included.
Why Hire First Page Strategy to Build and Implement a Technology-Focused SEO Strategy?
Now you know what to look for and the only question remaining is: Where do you find it? You could Google it, of course (and maybe you already have), or you could ask for referrals from other brands in the same industry. And while we’d never tell you to “take our word for it,” we can say with certainty that at FPS, we deliver all the qualities mentioned above…and a whole lot more.
Leaders in Growth Marketing
Growth marketing is a mystery to many, but it’s really all there in the name. The goal, at all times, is growth. At FPS, we take a strategic approach to growth, experimenting with different tactics until we find the ones that deliver measurable results. What does that mean for your tech brand? It means that the goal of the SEO work we do for you always comes down to one thing: growth. But not just any kind of growth — long-term, sustainable growth. So the benefits you see from the moment we get started will only compound over time.
Data-Driven Results
Oh man, do we love numbers — especially when the numbers show a clear upward trend. We don’t make decisions without consulting the data, and we always stay on top of your strategy’s performance so we’re ready to adapt and adjust whenever needed. Ultimately, our ability to pivot swiftly means we make informed decisions and optimize the results.
Dedicated Team of Experts
Sure, you could hire an SEO expert in-house. Just remember their salary comes with a lot of additional overhead, like training, PTO, sick time, benefits, and more. And it’s still only one person. When you go with an SEO agency like FPS, you get an entire team of experts working for your brand.
Successful SEO Stories with Technological Companies
Better keyword ranking, higher domain authority, and better ranking in SERPs — what’s not to love? Add to that tremendous growth that just keeps going like a certain pink bunny, and you’ve got a recipe for success. Here are two FPS case studies that show how our SEO team of experts delivered results.
Client A: Fintech Offshoot Looking to Ramp Up New Product
The client approached us as an established fintech firm. Their new product, a business funding venture, needed support to distinguish it from other products and brands in the market and many unrelated products with a similar name.
The existing URL had numerous issues, including:
- Low domain authority
- Decreasing traffic
- Difficulty maintaining keyword rank
- Being outranked by brands with similar name and keywords
Ultimately, we knew a full rebranding was in order. In the time it would take us to build up the existing brand’s keywords, traffic, and SERP ranking, we could just as easily start from scratch with a brand that would grow with them.
In six months, our SEO experts were able to achieve:
Our SEO efforts for the client were supported by content strategy, inbound marketing methodology, and technical SEO fixes.
Client B: Digital Business Formation Provider Comes to Us on the Rebound
Client B connected with FPS just after they’d fired their original SEO agency. After two years, they hadn’t seen any traffic growth or improvement in overall ranking. So it was FPS to the rescue!
Our SEO launched an intensive website audit and built a strategy focused on technical SEO, on-site updates, and link building. When we started, our goals included:
- 7 landing pages published per month
- 5-10 links built per month
- 8 blogs published per month
- Ongoing social media management
Here’s what our six-month plan delivered:
Six years later, we’re still working with Client B, and we’re thrilled to say they’ve seen long-term growth as a result of our efforts. In fact, in that time, we’ve helped them acquire hundreds of backlinks, have published hundreds of blog posts, and completed a full website migration to a new CMS.
SaaS Technical SEO Audit Action Plan
Now that you know what technical SEO is and some important tools that can help you optimize your site, let’s get to the fun part — creating a SaaS technical SEO audit plan.
Yes, I know. This isn’t sexy. But, it is important to the growth of your brand.
Wondering what an SEO audit is?
An SEO audit is a full analysis of all the fundamental factors that affect your SaaS website’s visibility in search. Therefore, a technical SEO audit analyzes all the technical factors that impact your site’s performance and ranking.
Technical SEO audits aim to identify the issues affecting your site’s organic search performance. Examples include site structure, crawlability and indexability, broken links/404 errors, duplicate content, slow load times, missing HTML tags, and more.
With that out of the way, let’s quickly dive into creating your own technical SEO audit action plan.
1. Plan
The first step to designing an effective technical SEO audit is to create a plan of action. A few elements to consider in the planning stage include:
- Decide which sections of the site need to be audited
- Determine the limitations of your CMS or codebase
- Give roles and responsibilities internally
- Make backups of your site in case you need to reverse any changes later
- Determine the tools you’ll use to benchmark current site performance
Creating a plan of action will help you focus on the most important elements of your website to tackle. It will also ensure that you deal with your technical SEO issues more efficiently and strategically. These will result in better technical optimizations, improved rankings, and more traffic to your site.
Competitor Analysis
Are your competitors outperforming you in search? It could be that they have fewer technical SEO obstacles standing in their way. Uncover exactly what they’re doing and how it’s working and craft a strategy that will put you ahead of the pack.
2. Audit
Once you’ve laid out your action plan, the next step is to create a technical SEO audit checklist. Technical SEO issues are often invisible. An audit goes through your site with a fine-tooth comb, detecting broken pages, crawl issues, and other site errors. On their own, these problems may seem like a minor hassle, but when there are multiple issues, they could stand in the way of your SEO success.
Some of essential elements to include in the checklist include:
Ensure Key Pages are Being Indexed
Indexation is one of the most critical aspects of technical SEO. That’s why your primary priority must be to ensure that all key pages are indexed. A simpler way to check the indexed pages on your site is to run a site search of your website on Google.
The number of results indicates the number of indexed pages.
You can also use other tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics for this.
To help improve indexation, consider implementing proper canonical and robots meta tags, among other best practices. Optimizing for indexation results in better chances of ranking for your keywords.
Domain Authority
Domain authority is a scoring system created by Moz that evaluates your site’s backlink portfolio. A high DA score signals that your site is trusted and reputable — and deserving of those links from high-quality external sites.
And while Google is tight-lipped about whether they use backlinks to determine ranking (and how), it seems to overall be one of the largest contributing factors.
Domain Rating
Similar to DA, domain rating is another scoring system used by Ahrefs. While the general purpose is largely the same, both systems use a different rubric to determine overall scores. And again, while there’s no hard evidence that Google is using backlinks to rank pages, the numbers clearly show that a higher DR typically means a higher first page rank.
Trust Flow
Trust Flow is yet another scoring system used to monitor backlinks, started by Majestic. Also called Topic Trust Flow, TF monitors the topics and industries from which your site is receiving backlinks.
Your SEO agency may use only one of these scoring rubrics or a combination. While the goal (determining your brand’s trustworthiness and standing in your industry) is roughly the same, the methodologies used will vary. Your SEO experts will know which one best suits your brand’s needs and goals.
Create a Content Marketing Plan
Content marketing and SEO go together like Sonny and Cher (in the good years, of course). But if you’re looking around for a content strategy and aren’t able to say, “I’ve got you, babe,” you aren’t alone. In fact, most B2B brands have no documented content strategy.
When looking for a potential SEO agency, make sure they incorporate content marketing in your overall SEO strategy. We can promise you that they always perform better together.
A good content strategy will include:
- A content calendar mapped to your funnel, search intent, and keywords
- A content distribution plan that covers all your channels
- A publishing schedule that is planned and consistent
- A plan to refresh, rewrite, or repurpose old content
Use SEO to Build Authority and Reputation
Reputation is critically important to tech companies, especially those that want to get to the first page. Competition is fierce, and brands that have been around longer often have the advantage. However, SEO can be used to build your brand reputation through strategic content distribution.
Backlinks also come into play here. As noted above, a strong backlink portfolio will increase your Domain Authority and/or Domain Rating, which positions you as a reputable and trusted brand.
Use Internal Links to Help Readers Find Content
We keep extolling the virtue of backlinks, but that’s only half the picture. Internal linking — links to other pages on your website — are nearly as important and can seriously ramp up your SEO results.
As noted above, make sure all pages are three clicks (or less) away from the homepage. Check anchor text to avoid duplication (the same text leading to different pages), and check frequently for broken links or redirects. A solid internal linking strategy will ensure your site is crawlable and will improve indexing, rank, and domain authority.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt files contain directives on how search engines should crawl your site (pages to crawl and those to exclude from crawling).
Optimize your robots.txt file and submit it to Google for better crawling and improved indexing.
You should also add your sitemap to your robots.txt file, so search engines know which pages to prioritize. This results in efficient use of crawl budget and increases the chances of important pages being indexed.
Missing Title Tag
Title tags help search engines understand what your page is about. They also help drive user clicks. Check all your pages to ensure they have optimized title tags.
Missing Meta Description
Your meta description is a mini sales pitch to encourage users to click on your snippet in SERPs. It also helps search engines better understand what your content is about. Missing meta descriptions can result in poor indexing and CTRs.
Ensure Proper Use of Heading Tags
Make sure all pages have header tags (H1-H3 tags) and that they’re properly used.
Header tags are an excellent way to give search engines more context about your content. They also improve your content’s readability score, thereby improving page experience.
Proper use of header tags also helps with better indexation.
200 Response Codes
200 response status codes mean a server response is successful, and your page can be displayed. You can check this in GSC, Ahrefs, and other tools.
Make sure that all the pages you want indexed return 200 status codes. Also, make sure all the pages that return 200 status codes are real pages, so you optimize your internal linking.
Eliminate 404s
404 error status codes mean the requested page can’t be found. This results in high bounce rates and poor overall website ranking.
To avoid 404 errors, implement proper redirects to affected pages. If your page has been moved or deleted permanently, implement a 301 redirect. Otherwise, use a 302 redirect for temporary changes.
Proper redirection ensures positive UX, leading to a good page experience. It also helps you maintain the link equity of the pages you’re redirecting from.
Employ the Right Url Structure
Site structure deals with how content on your site is organized, linked, and presented to users. It impacts the way users access your pages as well as how search engines crawl them. A few tips for optimizing your URL structure include:
- Use the hub/spoke internal linking structure to define page hierarchy.
- Create category-based URL structures to optimize the passing of link equity. It also makes it easier for users to navigate your site.
The right URL structure improves crawl efficiency and UX, making it a necessity when optimizing your technical SEO.
Ensure Your SSL Certificate is Set Up Correctly
Another element to consider as you run through your technical SEO checklist is to ensure your SSL certificate is set up correctly.
Having an SSL certificate is essential to ensuring that your site is secure. This is essential to SEO as it impacts your Google E-A-T score. Websites without security score extremely low on the trust factor. On the other hand, secure websites are considered trustworthy, leading to them being ranked higher in search.
User-friendly Navigation + Anchor Text
Giving users a positive experience is a critical part of technical SEO. That’s why you must ensure your site features user-friendly navigation. Doing so helps reduce bounce rates and increases critical ranking signals like dwell time and page views.
In the same vein, you should also ensure the anchor text you use when linking internally or externally also provides users with a clear indication of what to expect beyond the link.
Page Load Performance
Slow page speed is the kiss of death when it comes to technical SEO. Page load performance refers to the amount of time it takes for content on a webpage to load. This is an essential aspect of Google’s core web vitals. These standardized metrics developed by Google are designed to help developers understand how users experience a web page. Compress files, optimize code, and eliminate redirects to ensure your visitors have a positive experience and your site ranks higher.
Better page load speed equals better core web vitals, which results in better rankings. You can use a tool like Page Speed Insights to monitor page performance and diagnose critical issues that affect your page speeds.
Image Optimization
Visual content is critical for high-performing content. But when done incorrectly, it can be more of a hassle than a help. Optimize image alt attributes, resize files, and implement sitemaps and plugins to ensure your images add value to your site and your overall SaaS SEO strategy.
Metadata Analysis
Meta tags tell visitors and search engines what your content is about. Using the right metadata will get you more traffic and higher visibility, including title tags, alt attribution, robot tags, and more.
Create and Optimize a Sitemap
A sitemap is a blueprint of your SaaS website. It tells search engines. It’s a file that provides information about the essential pages, media, and other files on your site. The way your website is structured is every bit as important as the information that’s on it. Look at your site’s architecture and, if needed, restructure it to ensure better organic search results. What you’re looking for is a clear and easy to navigate structure, with related pages nested together.
Crawl errors lead to less of the content you want out in the world being indexed. And that means it can’t be found. Implement sitemaps to ensure your important pages are always crawled, indexed, and ranked appropriately to boost your SaaS SEO performance.
Creating and optimizing a sitemap helps search engines crawl and index your content more efficiently. Again, this is important to improve your visibility in SERPs.
One way to optimize your sitemaps includes ensuring they are dynamically generated. This ensures your latest content is included and shows up at the top. You should also consider dividing your sitemaps according to the type of pages you have on your site.
Structured Data Markup
Structured data adds tags to your content that helps search engines understand the information you’re sharing. Structured data leads to better interpretation of your website, which leads to better crawling and indexing. And all of that leads to — you guessed it — better results for your SaaS company.
Schema Markup
Schema markup is a particular vocabulary used in structured data. It defines the content on your website to ensure search engines are interpreting it correctly and ranking it appropriately. It sounds like a different language, but trust us, it works.
Penalty Prevention
Google algorithms can throw a major wrench into even the most carefully laid plans. However, you don’t have to put your website at risk of penalties, which could cost you organic traffic and sink your SERP ranking. Keep an eye out for possible issues, and always practice white hat SEO to ensure you don’t get hit with a surprise penalty.
Penalty Recovery
*Bleep* happens, but penalties don’t have to. And if they do, recovery is possible. You may have been penalized due to a search engine algorithm or because a previous SEO agency engaged in black hat practices. Whatever the reason, make updates to mitigate the damage and get back to pre-penalty performance.
Core Web Vitals
Core web vitals consist of three pillars: largest contentful paint (LCP), first input delay (FID), and cumulative layout shift (CLS). These are the technical SEO factors that Google measures to determine how effective your site is at maintaining user experience. Good CWVs usually mean your site runs faster, adapts across different devices, and offers an intuitive experience, so check them regularly.
Mobile-friendliness
Data shows that mobile has overtaken desktop in terms of internet usage.
Research shows that 59.32% of web visits are from mobile devices, compared to 38.46 from desktops.
This means you must ensure that your site offers an excellent mobile experience. One way of doing this is by using a responsive theme. You should also optimize for speed and ensure your pop-ups are mobile-friendly.
Ensuring your site is optimized for mobile is essential if you’re to rank well for mobile searches. It also helps boost your overall rankings on SERPs.
No Orphaned Pages
Orphan pages are pages with no internal links pointing to them. Because of this, they result in poor search performance and UX, thereby negatively impacting your site’s overall SEO.
Fixing orphan pages involves building internal links to them. Doing so makes them easier to crawl and index. It also results in better search performance for the pages.
Finding orphan pages is easy as you can use tools like Google Analytics, Screaming Frog, and Semrush, among others.
Eliminate Duplicate Content
Duplicate content refers to content that exists on multiple URLs. This makes it difficult for search engines to know which URL to rank higher for relevant search terms. As a result, all pages suffer since search performance is split among the pages. Alternatively, search engines may opt to rank a URL with unique content higher than your duplicate content.
If duplicate content exists on your site, you may want to implement 301 redirects to your original page. This will result in that page performing better in search.
Check JavaScript Rendering
With JavaScript (JS) becoming more popular in web development, you must factor it into your technical SEO checklist. While it helps make attractive and interactive websites, JS code makes it difficult for search engines to parse websites efficiently. It also makes rendering more difficult.
You can test your site’s JS rendering using tools like OnCrawl. These also give you recommendations for upping your JavaScript SEO game.
Stay on Top of Google Algorithm Updates
These days, it feels like a somewhat impossible task. Google’s algorithms are frequently in flux, and the search giant isn’t always the most transparent when it comes to communicating these updates.
That’s where a trusted team of SEO experts will come in very, very handy. No, we aren’t all-seeing, all-knowing wizards (we wish), but we do have industry insight and the expertise to swiftly adjust to whatever Google happens to throw our way.
Write Content that Fulfills Search Intent
So, you know visitors will be looking for your brand…but why? Search intent is critical to SEO, as that’s what drives not just the most traffic, but the best traffic, to your site. You’ll want to work with your SEO agency to make sure your content covers all the forms of search intent.
All of the content created for your site should align with one of these forms of search intent. Map them to the different stages in your funnel, and speak directly to visitors who are looking for answers to these types of questions.
If Your Audience is Local, Think Local SEO
To most tech companies, digital transformation is old hat. But that doesn’t mean you should be neglecting local SEO. In the last few years, local search has proven to be a powerful means to reach increased sales and revenue.
Think about ways you can take advantage of local search. Remember that if your product will be sold in retail outlets, most people will search for the product type with the phrase “near me.” People are also more likely now to choose a product and select an option to pick up in a store that is local to them.
In any case, it’s always a best practice to make sure your Google My Business profile is updated with the correct information and that you make sure your website explains fully where your products can be found.
Build High-Quality and Relevant Backlinks
Yep, we’re going to say it again: Backlinks are nonnegotiable. But they’re also not exactly easy to get.
For tech brands like yours, it’s the top challenge. And while it might be tempting to take an easier route like looking for any and all backlinks or even paying for them, a backlink profile of irrelevant or non-reputable links will hurt more than they help.
Instead, trust a qualified SEO agency to work on your link building strategy to ensure you get prime backlinks to add to your portfolio and build your domain authority.
Use Social Media to Build Brand Awareness and Grow Your Audience
Instead of tracking down your ideal buyer all across the vastness of the internet, it’s much easier to just start hanging out where they already are (i.e., social media). Getting your brand’s voice established on the right platform delivers you a pre-made audience that will only grow with time.
Ultimately, what you post on social media is just another form of content. Every bit of it should be optimized for search, as it will lead more visitors to your site. Your brand should have a presence on the big platforms, but depending on your buyer persona and your product, you may also have success on niche platforms.
Implement Schema Markup
Schema markup is a very specific type of vocabulary added on to your site’s coding that helps search engines understand what it’s all about.
Google’s Knowledge Graph, a sort of flowchart that outlines the relationships between online entities, reads schema markup to better understand what your brand is offering and deliver that information up to your target audience.
The best part? They don’t even have to know your brand, the product name, or much else, really. In the example below, we wanted to know the name of a book character. But all we could remember is that he was a wizard and, at one point, he lived under the stairs (please note: this is all completely hypothetical, lest you think we’ve been locked in a cupboard under the stairs for the last 20 years).
But it isn’t wizardry that delivered this result. It’s SEO. And in this case, it’s likely schema markup that enabled us to find the answer to our question.
Optimize for On-Page SEO Elements
Once you get the technical SEO issues addressed and resolved, it’s time to move on to on-page SEO. This involves literally everything — every piece of content, every CTA, every widget — that exists on every page.
On-page SEO improves user experience, ensures your website is easier to crawl and index, and can boost your conversion rate.
List on Relevant Directories
Just like social media, industry directories deliver you a built-in audience. Apply to get your tech brand listed on these directories:
- G2: A huge repository of business software and a space for peer-to-peer reviews
- TrustRadius: A review site for software and SaaS across numerous B2B industries
- GetApp: A software directory that focuses on product and service comparisons
- Capterra: A sort of middle-man that matches software buyers with the services and vendors they need
There may be other directories you want to appear on, depending on your industry and the services/products you offer. It’s a great and easy way to get your brand in front of the right audience and increase traffic and conversions.
Incentivize Customers to Write Reviews
All of the directories listed above are dependent on reviews, which are a powerful tool for growing your brand.
Aggregating reviews will boost your SEO by giving individuals better, more relevant search results. Part of your strategy should be seeking out reviews from existing satisfied customers.
Optimize for Voice Search
Voice search is growing across all demographics, but it’s not just about getting your brand found — it’s also a powerful way to boost sales and revenue.
Here are just a few ways you can improve your chances of being discovered through voice search:
- Align your content with search intent.
- Answer questions that pop up in the “People Also Ask” section of Google results for your keywords.
- Build quality backlinks and perfect your internal linking strategy to build authority.
- Optimize for local search.
- Make sure your content sounds natural and conversational, at around a 9th-grade reading level.
3. Implement
As you can see, technical SEO is as broad, if not more expansive, than on-page and off-page SEO. That’s why you must have a good plan for implementing it. Some ideas to help you do so include:
- Build a checklist with the factors mentioned above.
- Use tools to help identify issues affecting the technical aspects of your site.
- Prioritize each issue with a list of the required resources, priority level, e.t.c.
- Work through the implementation of the checklist and update the status of each issue along the way until you’ve ticked off every item.
You must also ensure that the human resources working on your technical SEO are competent and know what they’re doing. Otherwise, they might make mistakes that could be detrimental to your SEO and site.
4. Review
Once you’ve implemented all the action items on your SaaS technical SEO checklist, you must take time to review each task. Tips for doing so include:
- Use SaaS SEO tools to double-check that fixes were done correctly.
- After a set time (2-3 months), review progress against benchmarks to see if your improvements drive more rankings and result in more traffic.
Reviews must be done regularly to ensure you get accurate data to monitor the impact of your implementations.
SaaS Technical SEO: The Key to Winning in Search
SaaS technical SEO is a critical aspect of your overall SEO strategy. You’ll struggle to rank well if it’s lacking, even if you nailed your on-page and off-page SEO. That’s why you must regularly check your technical SEO health to avoid significant issues cropping up. This will result in big, costly projects if left unchecked.
Granted, SaaS technical SEO can be quite complicated. This is why you must outsource to technical SEO professionals.
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