SEO for Enterprise SaaS: How to Ramp Up Your Organic SQLs

Learn why SEO is critical for Enterprise SaaS companies and top tips to optimise your website’s organic SQLs.

Enterprise SaaS companies already have enough competition to reach and convert high-value leads – relying on organic search to bring in SQLs is like entering a marathon with one shoe (and racing against an opponent with roller skates on.)

Would it surprise you to learn that only about half (53.3%) of website traffic comes from organic searches – those searches where a user is intentional about what they’re looking for online?

But what if you don’t have the budget to drive paid ad campaigns and need to focus on organic growth?

The companies that excel in getting their names out there are those who invest the time and effort necessary to master Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Enterprise SaaS.

By understanding how search algorithms work – and how to make sure your SaaS website ranks high – you can significantly increase the number of organic SQLs your website brings in.

In This Blog

What Is SaaS SEO?

What Sets Enterprise SaaS SEO Apart?

Why SEO is Crucial for Enterprise SaaS Growth

Proven SEO Tactics for Enterprise SaaS to Boost SQLs

Tracking Your Enterprise SEO Success: Key Metrics to Watch

Common Challenges for Enterprise SaaS SEO

Real-World Enterprise SaaS SEO Success Stories

What Is SaaS SEO?

Before we turn to the tactics that help drive organic SQLs, we need to build a base understanding of SEO and how it relates to SaaS organic search growth.

In a nutshell, SEO is the process of optimizing your website and its content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This means that when someone searches for a particular keyword or phrase related to your business, your website will show up at the top of the list.

But why does this matter for SaaS companies?

The answer lies in understanding user behavior.

When looking for a solution to their problem, most users turn to search engines as their first point of research. And if your website isn't showing up in those search results, you're missing out on potential leads and conversions.

This is where SaaS SEO comes into play.

It's a specialized form of SEO that focuses on optimizing your website for the specific needs and behaviors of SaaS customers. This includes targeting keywords and phrases that are relevant to your industry, creating valuable content for users, and improving user experience on your website.

If you need any more reason to pay attention to your SEO, the stats speak for themselves:

53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search
SEO drives over 1000% more traffic compared to organic social media
The SEO market grew at a CAGR of 10% from 2021 to 2023, indicating increasing investment across industries, including enterprise SaaS.

So, if you aren’t already starting to think about how you can optimise your SaaS website for SEO, now is the time to start. This is where partnering with an experienced SEO agency can make a huge difference, ensuring your SEO strategy is tailored to your industry’s unique needs.

What Sets Enterprise SaaS SEO Apart?

Enterprise SaaS SEO isn't just about scaling up traditional SEO practices.

It involves navigating complex organizational structures, dealing with massive websites, and targeting high-level decision-makers. Here’s why:

Scale and Complexity Are Key – Enterprise SaaS websites often have thousands of pages, multiple product lines, and various subdomains. This scale introduces technical SEO challenges that smaller sites don't face.
It’s Already A Competitive Market – You're not just competing with other SaaS providers, but often with established industry giants with significant resources dedicated to SEO.
SaaS Has Longer Sales Cycles – Enterprise SaaS purchases often involve multiple decision-makers and longer consideration periods. Your SEO strategy needs to support this extended buyer's journey.
Technical Sophistication Comes Into Play – Enterprise SaaS products are often complex, requiring more in-depth, technical content to explain their value proposition effectively.
Brand Authority Matters – While brand recognition can be an advantage, it also means that maintaining and leveraging brand authority becomes a crucial part of your SEO strategy.

Why SEO is Crucial for Enterprise SaaS Growth

When you dial into the market of enterprise SaaS, SEO isn't just another channel – it can make or break your overall growth strategy. With longer consideration periods and multiple decision-makers involved, your SEO efforts must align with the needs of this unique market.

Cost-Effective Lead Generation

Once your SEO engine is running, it can provide a steady stream of high-quality leads at a lower cost per acquisition compared to paid channels – and better than most other organic channels.

Targeted Reach

SEO allows you to reach decision-makers precisely when they're searching for solutions to their problems, increasing the likelihood of conversion. And with 40% of purchasers influenced by a relevant search, you have a unique opportunity to convert quickly!

Building Trust and Credibility

By consistently appearing in search results for industry-related queries, you establish your brand as a trusted authority in your space. And the more effective your SEO content, the more you stand to gain – SaaS companies with content see roughly 30% higher growth rates.

Supporting the Buyer's Journey

A well-executed SEO strategy provides valuable content at every stage of the buyer's journey, nurturing leads from awareness to decision. Added to the increase in trust, and you’ll start to see a significant improvement in your overall conversion rates.

Compounding Returns

Unlike paid advertising, the benefits of SEO compound over time. As you build authority and content, your organic traffic can continue to grow without proportional increases in spend. Plus, the ROI of SEO for B2B SaaS is an impressive 702% – with a 7-month Time to Break-Even.

Data and Insights

SEO efforts provide valuable data about your audience's needs, preferences, and behaviors, informing product development and other marketing strategies.

Proven SEO Tactics for Enterprise SaaS to Boost SQLs

Once you know the why behind investing in quality SEO for your B2B SaaS company, it's time to dive into the how. Here are some proven tactics that enterprise SaaS companies can use to boost their SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads) through SEO.

1. Targeting the Right Keywords for Enterprise Audiences

Keywords are just that – keywords that your target audience is using to search for products or services like yours. For enterprise SaaS companies, you want to know that the content you are creating is honing in on the right search terms that your potential customers are using. This means doing thorough keyword research and understanding the intent behind those keywords.

Knowing Your Market

To effectively target enterprise-level decision-makers, you need to know who they are. You may think that you know your ideal customers, but if the traffic isn’t coming, something might be off.

Here are some tips to help you get a deeper understanding of the right customer’s needs, pain points, and the language they use:

Conduct Stakeholder Interviews: Speak with your sales team, customer success managers, and even directly with clients to understand the challenges they face and the solutions they seek.
Analyze Support Tickets and FAQs: These can be goldmines for understanding the specific issues your target audience is grappling with.
Use Social Listening: Monitor industry forums, LinkedIn groups, and Twitter conversations to understand trending topics and pain points in your space.
Leverage Intent Data: Use tools that provide intent data to understand what topics and solutions enterprise buyers are researching.

Competitor Keyword Analysis

Don’t just rely on the words your customers are using – watch your competitors and get inspired by what’s working for them. This requires a careful balance of originality and relevance.

Identify Your True Competitors: In enterprise SaaS, your SEO competitors might not be the same as your product competitors. Look for companies ranking for your target keywords.
Use SEO Tools for Competitor Analysis<span style="font-weight: 400;">: Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz can help you see what keywords your competitors are ranking for.
Analyze SERP Features: Look at what type of content is ranking for your target keywords. Are they blog posts, landing pages, or other formats?
Identify Content Gaps: Look for high-value keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but you're not. These represent opportunities for new content.
Assess Keyword Difficulty: Enterprise SaaS often involves highly competitive keywords. Balancing keyword volume with difficulty is crucial for success.

SQLs are looking for a reason to pick you over the competition – but if they can’t find you in the first place, they won’t have a chance to choose you.

2. On-Page SEO Techniques Tailored for Enterprise SaaS

On-page SEO for enterprise SaaS goes beyond just optimizing meta tags and content. It's about creating a user experience that caters to sophisticated enterprise buyers while also signaling your authority to search engines.

This typically starts with creating quality content – and continues with consistently providing that quality across all of your channels.

Strengthen E-E-A-T by Collaborating with Industry Leaders

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is becoming a key part of Google’s search algorithms. When websites and brands are offering quality content, the algorithm works to boost those results – because they are more likely to drive traffic.

So, how can you make use of these metrics?

Showcase Your Team's Expertise: Create author bios for your content that highlight the experience and qualifications of your team members.
Collaborate with Industry Experts: Partner with recognized industry leaders for guest posts, interviews, or webinars. This not only brings valuable insights but also boosts your content's credibility.
Highlight Case Studies and Testimonials: Real-world examples of how your solution has helped other enterprise clients boost your E-E-A-T signals significantly.
Regularly Update Your Content: Enterprise SaaS evolves quickly. Regularly updating your content shows that you're on top of industry trends and changes.
Provide In-Depth Technical Content: Don't shy away from detailed, technical content. Enterprise buyers often appreciate and expect this level of depth.

Here’s the key – don’t just create SEO content for SEO’s sake. If you enter into the process with a goal to help provide quality content, the market (and algorithms) will reward you.

3. Off-Page SEO and Link-Building Tactics for Enterprise SaaS

Off-page SEO – particularly link building – is a key way that your SaaS company can begin to build domain authority.

In a way, it’s as though the search engine sees your website as a student, and all other websites are its professors. The more reputable professors (i.e., high authority sites) that reference your student (i.e., website), the better grades it will receive.

Capture Brand Mentions

As an enterprise SaaS company, your brand is likely mentioned across the web. Now, your goal is to turn those mentions into quality backlinks. Here are some ways to start building the “roots” of your backlinks:

Set Up Brand Monitoring: Use tools like Google Alerts, Mention, or Ahrefs to track mentions of your brand across the web – and make note of them as updates come through.
Reach Out for Links: When you find unlinked mentions, reach out to the content creators or webmasters with a polite request to add a link you provide. It never hurts to ask!
Provide Value: Offer something in return, such as sharing their content on your social media channels or providing them with exclusive insights or data. It’s likely they are looking for quality SEO as well!

Use Product Led Digital PR

Digital PR can be a powerful tool for building high-quality backlinks. This works by creating and promoting valuable content that naturally earns backlinks from reputable websites.

By focusing on product-led digital PR, you can showcase your brand's expertise while also gaining valuable backlinks.

Develop original research, surveys, or reports that provide valuable insights for your industry.
Use data from your product (anonymized, of course) to create interesting statistics or trends that journalists and bloggers would want to cite.
Cultivate relationships with editors and journalists in your industry. Offer them expert commentary or exclusive insights.
Stay on top of industry trends and news, and quickly produce content that adds value to current discussions – also knowns as “newsjacking.”

4. Technical SEO for SaaS

Technical SEO goes beyond the external-facing content you’ve created, and looks at how your website is structured and optimized for search engines. This is especially important for SaaS companies, as their websites often have complex structures and multiple pages.

Optimize Your Site Structure

A well-organized site structure helps both users and search engines navigate your content. When users visit your site, is it obvious where they can find the information they need? Is your site easy to navigate and understand?

To improve your site's structure:

Use a Logical Hierarchy: Organize your content into main categories and subcategories that make sense for your users.
Implement Proper Internal Linking: Use strategic internal linking to guide users (and search engines) through related content.
Create an XML Sitemap: This helps search engines understand and index your site structure.
Optimize for Mobile: Ensure your site provides a seamless experience across all devices.

Leverage Automation for Streamlined Technical SEO

If the list above seemed overwhelming, don’t worry. Trying to manually implement all these changes can be time-consuming and difficult to maintain. Thankfully, there are tools available that can automate many technical SEO tasks, making it easier for site owners to optimize their sites without the need for extensive technical knowledge:

Use SEO Auditing Tools: Tools like Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl can automatically identify technical issues across your site.
Implement Schema Markup: Use structured data to help search engines understand your content better. Automate this process for consistency across your site.
Monitor Site Speed: 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and set up automated alerts for any significant drops in performance.

Tracking Your Enterprise SEO Success: Key Metrics to Watch

KPIs matter in SEO – because only what gets measured gets improved.

But it’s more than just building a dashboard and watching the data – you need a reason to focus on certain metrics in enterprise SEO and a goal to apply those metrics toward in SaaS as well:

Organic Traffic: Monitor the overall trend of organic traffic to your site.
Keyword Rankings: Track your rankings for target keywords, especially those with high purchase intent.
Organic Conversion Rate: Measure how many organic visitors are converting into leads or customers.
Domain Authority: Keep an eye on your overall domain authority as a measure of your site's credibility.
Backlink Profile: Monitor the quality and quantity of backlinks your site is acquiring.
Page Load Speed: Continuously track and optimize your site's load times.
Organic Market Share: Compare your organic visibility to competitors for key terms.

Once you have the metrics in place, you’ll want to apply them to particular goals or milestones that you have set for your website. This could include increasing organic traffic by a certain percentage, reaching a specific ranking for a target keyword, or improving your organic conversion rate.

Common Challenges for Enterprise SaaS SEO

While the stats speak for themselves, it doesn’t mean that everyone on your team – or in your market – is ready to act accordingly. The key to overcoming challenges is to know your goals in detail and find ways to communicate them without overwhelming your teams (or your budgets.)

Challenge: Getting Leadership on Board with SEO Efforts

Securing executive buy-in for SEO initiatives can be tough – especially if margins are tight. The ability to break down the concepts for particular stakeholders is key.

Frame SEO in terms of business outcomes like revenue and market share, not just traffic.
Demonstrate how competitors are leveraging SEO and the opportunity cost of not investing.
Begin with a pilot project to demonstrate ROI before asking for larger investments.

Challenge: Simplifying Complex SaaS Products in Content Marketing

Enterprise SaaS products are often complex. Some may take months or even years to fully onboard and utilize all features. When creating content for these products, it can be difficult to strike a balance between providing enough information for users and not overwhelming them with technical jargon.

Use analogies or metaphors to relate complex features to familiar concepts.
Don’t shy away from visual content. Use infographics, videos, and interactive demos to explain complex features.
Focus on benefits, not (just) features. Emphasize how your product solves specific pain points rather than listing technical specifications.

Challenge: Enhancing Team Collaboration in SEO Strategy

Managing SEO across large teams can lead to conflicting strategies. For instance, some may prioritize keyword optimization within product descriptions, while others focus on link building. This can lead to a disjointed and ineffective SEO strategy.

Define who's responsible for different aspects of SEO.
Develop and distribute clear SEO best practices across teams.
Use tools that allow for transparent tracking of SEO tasks and progress.
Hold regular SEO sync-ups to ensure alignment across departments.

Real-World Enterprise SaaS SEO Success Stories

Let's look at three impressive case studies that demonstrate the power of well-executed SEO strategies in the SaaS space:

Case Study 1: Monday.com's Content Scaling Strategy

Monday.com – known for their project management software – is but one of several SaaS solutions that promise to overhaul company productivity. But as one of many, they struggled to find a way to stand out and gain brand recognition.

To boost their organic SEO, their team produced over 1,000 SEO-optimized articles in just 12 months, averaging 125 new blog posts per month.

Created comprehensive documentation and guides for content creation
Focused on keywords that could rank quickly
Developed a system for writer acquisition and quality control

Their content-focused organic SEO method worked wonders – and Monday.com grew from 100K to over 1.2M monthly organic visitors. Their meteoric growth helped drive revenue and was a contributing factor in the company’s eventual IPO.

Case Study 2: Hotjar's Full-Funnel Topic Clusters

Hotjar, a user behavior analytics tool, faced similar struggles in user acquisition as Monday.com. Similarly, their team looked at a full-funnel approach to content that identified SEO-specific content clusters for various parts of the customer journey:

Used customer insights to uncover high-converting topics
Designed content experience to guide readers toward becoming customers
Continued link-building efforts despite already having a high domain rating (DR 92)

Hotjar’s SEO method helped to increase their search volume by 47% over two years, translating into millions of new visitors and significant revenue growth.

Case Study 3: Typeform's Product-Led SEO Approach

Typeform, an online form and survey platform, built SEO into a major revenue channel – which may seem surprising for a company focused on providing online form services. However, regardless of the product or service, Typeform shows that SEO matters.

To drive engagement, Typeform implemented a product-led SEO strategy focusing on retention-driven topics and growth modeling. To achieve this, they:

Selected and prioritized keywords based on potential revenue impact
Built out a template library, ranking for thousands of bottom-funnel keywords
Developed a unique backlink-building technique

As a result, Typeform grew its SEO channel to generate $3M in yearly lifetime value revenue, contributing to the company's growth from $1M to $13M in ARR over 3.5 years.

SEO For Enterprise SaaS Is Powerful – But It Doesn’t Have To Be Mysterious

The case studies above show just how impactful a quality enterprise SaaS SEO strategy can be when you need to find new ways to drive user engagement. And while there are several ways you can go about building your SEO, the process itself doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

Take a few of the strategies above and determine which fits best into your current marketing methods. You may find that a particular method works wonders for your organic SEO, while others don’t return the same results as fast.

However, you’ll likely find that a combination of SEO tactics is the most effective way to increase your online presence and drive qualified leads to your enterprise SaaS business.

Remember, SEO is a long-term game, especially at the enterprise level. Consistency, patience, and a data-driven approach are key to success. Start implementing these strategies today, and watch your organic presence—and your SQL pipeline—grow over time.

Need help implementing these strategies? Our enterprise SaaS SEO services are designed to drive results for companies just like yours. Contact us today to learn how we can supercharge your organic growth.