24, Aug 2022
SEO for SaaS products: how to compete with the SERP giants

SaaS or software as a service is a software licensing service model by subscription. Most often, such software is located on servers in the network. The user accesses the service through a browser or API, and is entirely supported by the service provider. Simply put, the SaaS model allows the client to work with a ready-made solution online. The user simply pays for access and gets a ready-made tool as quickly as possible. In today’s article, Ivan Paly from Boosta will tell you how he and his team drive traffic to their own SaaS products:

Sitechecker – website analysis service for technical errors;
Copywritely – content analysis service;
Kparser is a search suggestion parser.
For 2 years of work, the team has received impressive results. The products compete in search results with the giants of the seo tools industry: Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz and Backlinko. The total traffic has already exceeded 300,000 unique users and continues to grow, and the number of referring donors is more than 2,000.

We will divide the report into 3 parts: content creation, traffic acquisition and link building. Let’s move on to specific steps. Let’s imagine that you took a product, studied competitors, parsed their semantics and filed the main pages in English. These are classic steps. The question is how to extend the semantics.

Getting traffic

Separation into mini-products
The first way is to divide your product into mini-products. At one point, we noticed that users analyze pages not entirely, but their specific parts: meta tags, h1, title and description. We added pages based on this data, and Google began to rank them well. For example, this was the case with Favicon Checker: we initially made an information landing, added a tool, and saw push traffic. You can add these mini-tools to the first screen, in the middle of an article, or combine them with how-to content. Or you can generally do only one to and leave the title, h1 or description. The main value of such pages is that the user satisfies his intent simply by getting some kind of response from the tool. He doesn’t always need to read the content. Similar responses can be generated in English and then scaled to other languages.

Create mini-products based on API


Many tools that have an API put a lot of emphasis on the quality, accuracy, and volume of their data, but often forget about design. If you work in this direction with the same data, you can easily overtake your competitors. For example, this is what we did with the traffic-checker landing page. In this case, you need to be careful. After receiving traffic, we analyze statistics on conversions and profit. After all, you will most often have to pay for the API. Even if the landing page is in the top, you need to constantly analyze whether it makes a profit.

Other Uses for the Product


Let’s take a look at the kparser search hint parser as an example. First, it was in the top for key-word generator and key-word suggestion tool. At some point, we noticed that the site ranks well for words related to YouTube – the landing page youtube key word tool went well. We wondered what else people might be looking for? As a result, we noticed a great demand for youtube name generator. It turns out that many aspiring YouTubers want to create channels, but cannot come up with a name for themselves.

It’s a bit strange. How can search suggestions help you come up with a brand name? So we went a little further. Our product didn’t just teach YouTubers how to create a brand for themselves. He explained in detail how to use this data. The idea worked. Now it is our most popular product. Further experiments with domain name generator and business name generator began. They were also successful. The important thing is that you look at your product from different angles and try to understand how it can be used.

Comparison with competitors


Surely your product has competitors. Many users are not satisfied with them, and users will look for an alternative. Such requests have a small volume, but the hottest target audience. She has already used the tool and was dissatisfied with something. This is the warmest customer and you can satisfy him. Show your benefits and reflect this in your content. Don’t forget small competitors. Analyze sites with good potential and copy their features. As they grow, the traffic to your landing page will also grow.