What is a SAAS? What kind of company is a SAAS?

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SAAS is an acronym for “Software as a service ”. It refers to a type of computer program or software that is offered in exchange for a subscription fee and is generally hosted in “the cloud”.

The most popular SAAS.
The list could go on and on, but here are some of the most successful ones recently: – Webflow . The drag-and-drop tool for building, designing, and hosting websites. – Github . A tool/community used by thousands and thousands of software professionals around the world to host, manipulate, and distribute code through the GIT version control system. – Adobe Creative Cloud . Adobe’s cloud-based suite of applications and services. – Atlassian . The company that owns Trello and Jira, which you probably know, and that creates a large number of software development, management, and collaborative document tools. – Xero . The cloud-based accounting software that allows, among other things, to connect businesses with their financial data, partners, and clients in real time. It also includes other highly demanded services such as payroll management. – Zoom . A SAAS that exploded in downloads after the COVID pandemic that is already well-known throughout the world and is a cloud-based audio and video communication platform used both at business and personal level. – Slack . Communication platform that has become a classic for team communication in a large number of companies around the world. – Mailchimp . The best-known email marketing platform and probably the easiest to use to automate the sending of emails, newsletters…

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They sound familiar to you, right? Of course. For any user and worker who has anything to do with the use of a computer and the Internet, they are practically common tools . The growth of this type of solutions and companies is really huge if we go even deeper into the acronyms. In reality, we could talk about BPaaS (business process as a service), Iaas (infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service). Normally, all these types are grouped together in SaaS, but as the technology that generates them becomes more complex, new varieties appear. As we said, the use and spending by users increases year after year. Here we can see recent figures published by the renowned company Gartner.

2020 2021 2022
Cloud Business Process Services (BPaaS) 46.066 51.027 55,538
Cloud Application Infrastructure Services (PaaS) 58.917 80.002 100.636
Cloud Application Services (SaaS) 120.686 145,509 171.915
Cloud Management and Security Services 22.664 25.987 29.736
Cloud System Infrastructure Services 64,286 91,543 121.620
Desktop as a Service (DaaS) 1.235 2.079 2.710
Total Market 313,853 396.147 482.155
Source: Gartner
What does SEO mean for SAAS?
It is the process by which organic traffic from search engines is increased in a SAAS company, managing to position the website in the first places in the results of the main search engines.

Benefits of using SEO strategies for SAAS
1 Better cost-benefit than pay-per-click or performance strategies in the medium-long term.
This is undoubtedly one of the main benefits. Generating more leads without spending on advertising, improving the cost of acquisition. But let's not be mistaken, it is not a zero cost. SEO strategies for SAAS usually have a contained cost, which does not experience abrupt increases, but is repeated constantly. Although a constant investment is required, the cost does not increase when clicks increase.

The idea is to create a solid flow of organic search traffic in the medium term by working on the entire semantic field surrounding the service offered by the SAAS company. The semantic field and the study of keywords or topics is of vital importance and we will see later how to implement it.

Obviously, SEO strategies generally cannot compete when it comes to return figures with a short-term payment strategy, especially with a product that has just been launched or in a start-up environment. However, it is common for this type of company to have to consider growth environments or projections over a period of years, and that is when this SEO strategy for SAAS becomes more relevant.

2 Improved credibility, expertise and user trust.
Having a broad presence on Google and other search engines like YouTube will also help SAAS companies to generate trust and increase the so-called EAT. Especially if the SEO strategy is based on generating content that helps the user in topics related to the service offered by the company. A clear example is the content hub on “preventive security” that the Kaspersky antivirus offers on one of the landing pages of its website . Although users who see this content do not necessarily have to hire Kaspersky’s service, they do gradually become familiar with the concept of the brand with the help they have found through Google organically for some problem or concern they have about online security.

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3 Drive the right users to the right landing page through Google search.
The simple fact of performing a keyword mapping already makes you direct the content of your page towards a term or topic. This is very useful so that the user knows which part of your website they have to go to depending on their needs. Properly separating the purchase pages from the information pages, avoiding cannibalizing content, ensures a correct path for the user within the page.

4 Match service possibilities with user needs.
A correct SEO strategy accompanied by correct content management will allow that even if the technology is new and disruptive, through content with clear and colloquial language, it can be understood by new users or those who are not “early adopters” and also allow to cover new needs generated by these new technologies. The case of the VPN world and online security is paradigmatic. Given the increased use of the Internet, many regions and/or countries have generated blocks or cuts to the access and use of citizens. Companies such as Avast have created content as part of a global SEO strategy to try to cover this new need created by this technology. The hospital contact email database user may not have known exactly what a VPN was at first, but they would have realized that they could not access certain content from a streaming platform, Netflix for example. That is where Avast’s SEO strategy bridges the gap between need and service. For example, in its Avast Academy , where it explains how a VPN works and how it can allow you to see content that you could not access with normal browsing from your web browser.

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Fountain:https://www.avast.com/es-es/c-topic-streaming
5 It is relatively easy to project the growth and scope of this strategy.
One of the interesting aspects of SEO strategies is that a large part of the search volume is known. With this volume, we can make reasonable predictions about how many users we could impact if we manage to reach the top positions in the search results for certain terms.

6 The SEO strategy usually impacts the rest of the acquisition channels.
The main channel that improves when the SEO strategy starts working is the referral channel. Generally, when organic traffic starts to gain traction, natural links to the SAAS company's website start to appear. This process also helps us to have an indirect link building strategy that grows gradually.

How to build an SEO strategy for a SAAS company.
First of all, we should consider how a user usually finds a software tool. Typically, the user is looking for a solution to a problem he or she has. There is a need that needs to be met. This approach leads us to a strategy that will answer the question:

Generating traffic for SAAS. That's the key.
They may or may not know that a software platform exists. What is common to all potential customers of that SAAS company is that they have a need or problem to solve.

These are the fundamental elements that a good SEO strategy for SAAS must have. From here you will generate traffic around those needs.

Establish measurable and realistic KPIs.
Without a doubt, in order to carry out a successful but realistic strategy, it is essential that we know what objective we are pursuing.

It is typical to propose vague objectives. A classic example: “Get the most sales.” Another example: “Get more keywords than competitor X.” This type of goal setting usually does not work for a simple reason: its measurement is vague, it does not have a specific subject of action and it does not favor planning.

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Instead, it would be much better to opt for phrases like: “Increase the number of leads received by 25% during the first half of the year” or “Increase the number of downloads of the freemium version of my service by 15% during high-demand months.”

These types of objectives, in addition to metrics such as ROI and SEO projections, can help generate much more accurate and efficient SEO strategies with the resources available.

Study of keywords, topics, semantic fields and their arrangement in the form of a funnel.
The basic idea is that we need to find out what keywords and topics your potential customers are going to use to find software that meets their needs. Selecting and dividing the types of keywords and focusing them on different buyer personas is essential at this stage of the strategy. A conversion funnel will be used to categorize these keywords. We can think of the conversion funnel as a representation of the user's journey to reach the SAAS company's service. The beginning of the journey will generally be when entering the wide part of the funnel and the end will be either the exit or, preferably, the acquisition. Typically we can use Top, Middle and Bottom to differentiate these keywords. Top : The wide part of the funnel. Searches without a clear purchase intention, of an informational nature, which can be generic and have a high volume or specific and have little volume. Middle : The middle part. There is already some knowledge on the subject and the potential customer already knows that there are solutions for their need or problem and begins to explore options. Bottom : The narrowest part of the conversion funnel. This is where the final decision is made. The future client already knows the SAAS brand and knows that it can solve their problem, but they will use combinations of words such as “cheap” or “price” to reach the destination page. Having good parallel branding is also key in this process so that we can be sure that when searching for words that combine brands + characteristics, the brand’s results are shown.