~ 10 Min read
CHAPTER 1
Now that you’ve worked so hard on SEO, you would want to keep track of the results of your efforts. Tools like: Google Analytics, will help you keep a constant check on your website traffic, paid ads, conversions, and leads over time. You will be able to analyze what’s working and what’s not, and if something isn’t, you can come up with a strategy that will work for your company and your customers as well.
A tracking ID will be generated for your website.To get your tracking ID:
It can take up to 24 hours for data to show up in Analytics. Paste the analytics snippet to your website’s HTML code or add the tracking ID on every webpage you want to track.
Once you’ve set up the Analytics account, it’s time to track the incoming data. (You can also sync Google Search Console with Analytics to track traffic by keyword and import key data for analysis). Analyzing the gathered data plays an important role in the entire process, if you’re doing SEO right – it can act as a validation of your efforts and if not, it indicates the areas you need to work on.
To get an in depth understanding of whether your efforts are delivering results or not, you need to keep an eye on 3 key factors:
You can keep a tab on the incoming traffic and monitor it by either using Google Analytics, Ahrefs or SEMrush. Each tool has a unique way of analyzing. Some key metrics that you should track as a SaaS are:
This will help you understand what keywords you’re ranking for in your organic search and if they are diverting enough or estimated traffic to your website or not. This can play a key role in upgrading your Keyword and Content Strategy.
The goal here is to check the position you’re at, and if your content and link building efforts have yielded results finally. Monitoring your monthly progress will help you revamp your overall strategy everytime they don’t seem to be working.
All you need to do here is to keep an eye on the content pieces or webpages that have a higher ranking in the SERPs and also the ones that don’t (so you can come back and work on those – maybe try a podcast or infographic to repurpose the content). Ranking also acts as a stepping stone to gain insights into website optimization.
To ensure that all this is working towards a better revenue or any other objective that you might have set, e.g., if your objective is to get “x number of signups for a demo” you need to track the same by setting up the Google Analytics’ Goals feature and use Event Tracking for monitoring form submissions.
Once you start monitoring all your SEO efforts, you’ll get a better understanding of what’s working for you and what’s not, the keywords that are driving results and bringing quality traffic and the ones you can eliminate from your keyword and content strategy. Also, make sure that everything is placed in a proper report and that you’ve set benchmarks for each of the above metrics.
CHAPTER 2
Ranking for position #0 is crucial for driving traffic to your website as it boosts your company’s credibility. All you need to do is play your cards right and work on your SEO strategies constantly. Nevertheless, the top 3 spots aren’t the only way to rule the search engine results. There is, however, a secret passage that can help you outrank the top positions Featured Snippet.
You might have seen a snippet many times when you enter a search in Google. This position is often referred to as Position Zero. These snippets can play a major role in enhancing your search engine rankings as they take up most of the space in a search result.
For instance, you searched for “How to start with SEO,” Google answers your question with a snippet that contains information about your question and places this link above all of the other links on the search results. This content is pulled from the content that’s already ranking on page one, but it can also pull from lower-ranking SERPs. Whether you’re ranking high or not, you will always have a chance to rank for featured snippets.
Whether you’re ranking high or not, you will always have a chance to rank for featured snippets. There are 3 major snippets:
Answers are presented in numbered or bulleted lists. List snippets usually apply to posts with step-by-step instructions.
This snippet displays answers to questions like how, why, when, and what or definitions in the form of a paragraph.
Answers are presented in numbered or bulleted lists. List snippets usually apply to posts with step-by-step instructions.
Being a SaaS website, it is important that you have a “How to” section. It’s similar to the FAQ section. Developing a section devoted to addressing and answering questions will help you increase the traffic to your site and also might get you a chance to feature in the #0 position. For a “How to” section, you can try by combining a couple of questions (closely related to each other) into one query and answer accordingly.
Use Answer the public to find relevant questions and then try to answer them. Answer the public will display a number of results for your query like.
Questions are most likely to bring up featured snippets, so you can try and answer how, what, when, where, etc.
Also, make sure that you do some keyword research before you start with the content part to make sure the words you’re searching are SEO friendly. An Ahrefs study found that search queries with the following words have a better chance of getting featured :
You’re already familiar with the 3 major types of snippets, the only thing you need to decide is What type of snippet do you want to rank for? Once you’re clear on that you can structure your content accordingly. Here’s how you can format your content for a snippet:
For this, you can use SEMrush where you can check the featured snippets of your competitors in the “Featured Snippet” option under the “Organic Research” section.
With this, you can also optimize your content for the same exact words and topics.
Apart from researching keywords and finding relevant questions “Answer The Public”, “People Also Ask” section usually beneath the featured snippet can also help you a lot.
When working on a blog post, try to answer as many questions as you can.
Since it’s scientifically proven that people remember 20% of what they read and 80% of what they see, leveraging this fact can help you keep the ball in your court. Using good quality images and videos can play a key role in ranking for position #0.
Identify guest posting, surveys, studies, guides, and tools and link your content with relevant backlinks.
Use keywords in title, and meta description. Use titles beginning with “how-to” or “what is” and try to use the targeted keywords in the meta description as well. For the content, make sure the keyword density is 1% – 3%.
Here’s how you can overshadow your competitors’ efforts:
Create pages to target users who are looking for alternatives to your competitor by optimizing for their brand names and the word “alternative” (e.g. “alternative to Facebook,” “alternative site to Ahrefs,” “Google Analytics alternative”,etc.).
While creating this page, your main aim will be, obviously, to promote your brand as a better solution and also to optimize the “alternative” keywords search to ensure you outrank your competition. Here you need to make sure you are not over-marketing your brand but instead giving the users genuine alternatives along with your brand.
To state this in an example, assume that you’re the SEO Content Writer for Ubersuggest and you create a page with the title “Top 5 alternatives to Ahrefs”, you can add names like:
You can use this tactic as a part of your content development strategy. You can also have guest posts and other authored contributions and optimize them for brand “alternative” keywords, thus ending up on valuable search positions that will fortify your brand against the “alternative searches” your competitor was targeting with their SEO efforts.
Your competitor’s users might be searching for better alternatives, giving you another reason to outshine the search results.
For example, you are a marketing automation software and you aim to position your company against HubSpot, a highly recognized competitor. You can try creating content that aims at ranking for keywords like “Hubspot issues”.
To achieve a top search engine ranking, you also need to invest in link building tactics. The above-mentioned tactics will increase the awareness of your product within your competitor’s customer base and people will start considering your brand as a solution.
There’s a famous saying – “All Good Things To Those Who Wait”, it’s especially true in case of SEO. So before answering the above mentioned question you need to have an in depth knowledge of your website and the SEO strategies your folks are working on. Once you’ve all that in place, you need to ask yourself:
Although investing in SEO can seem a lot of work and at times boring as well, SEO especially for SaaS has a better ROI owing to their long-term and cost-effective results. It is a continuous process and the fact of the matter is that the more you invest (time mostly), the greater is the ROI unlike paid ads where the results stop with the budget. In comparison to the efforts and investments put into SEO, it yields exponential results higher and for a longer term than the inputs.
For SaaS companies, it’s not just about driving traffic, but also about being experts in your market niche to the extent that whenever your potential customer faces any issue, they know they can rely on your content.
There is a constant fierce competition between rivals to make it to the top rankings and although a magic button that miraculously takes you to the top spot would be great, unfortunately, you can win this rank battle in the world of Google by Abracadabra…
Ranking for position #0 is crucial for driving traffic to your website as it boosts your company’s credibility. All you need to do is play your cards right and work on your SEO strategies constantly. Nevertheless, the top 3 spots aren’t the only way to rule the search engine results. There is, however, a secret passage that can help you outrank the top positions Featured Snippet.
You might have seen a snippet many times when you enter a search in Google. This position is often referred to as Position Zero. These snippets can play a major role in enhancing your search engine rankings as they take up most of the space in a search result.
For instance, you searched for “How to start with SEO,” Google answers your question with a snippet that contains information about your question and places this link above all of the other links on the search results. This content is pulled from the content that’s already ranking on page one, but it can also pull from lower-ranking SERPs. Whether you’re ranking high or not, you will always have a chance to rank for featured snippets.
Whether you’re ranking high or not, you will always have a chance to rank for featured snippets. There are 3 major snippets:
Answers are presented in numbered or bulleted lists. List snippets usually apply to posts with step-by-step instructions.
This snippet displays answers to questions like how, why, when, and what or definitions in the form of a paragraph.
Answers are presented in numbered or bulleted lists. List snippets usually apply to posts with step-by-step instructions.
Being a SaaS website, it is important that you have a “How to” section. It’s similar to the FAQ section. Developing a section devoted to addressing and answering questions will help you increase the traffic to your site and also might get you a chance to feature in the #0 position. For a “How to” section, you can try by combining a couple of questions (closely related to each other) into one query and answer accordingly.
Use Answer the public to find relevant questions and then try to answer them. Answer the public will display a number of results for your query like.
Questions are most likely to bring up featured snippets, so you can try and answer how, what, when, where, etc.
Also, make sure that you do some keyword research before you start with the content part to make sure the words you’re searching are SEO friendly. An Ahrefs study found that search queries with the following words have a better chance of getting featured :
You’re already familiar with the 3 major types of snippets, the only thing you need to decide is What type of snippet do you want to rank for? Once you’re clear on that you can structure your content accordingly. Here’s how you can format your content for a snippet:
For this, you can use SEMrush where you can check the featured snippets of your competitors in the “Featured Snippet” option under the “Organic Research” section.
With this, you can also optimize your content for the same exact words and topics.
Apart from researching keywords and finding relevant questions “Answer The Public”, “People Also Ask” section usually beneath the featured snippet can also help you a lot.
When working on a blog post, try to answer as many questions as you can.
Since it’s scientifically proven that people remember 20% of what they read and 80% of what they see, leveraging this fact can help you keep the ball in your court. Using good quality images and videos can play a key role in ranking for position #0.
Identify guest posting, surveys, studies, guides, and tools and link your content with relevant backlinks.
Use keywords in title, and meta description. Use titles beginning with “how-to” or “what is” and try to use the targeted keywords in the meta description as well. For the content, make sure the keyword density is 1% – 3%.
Here’s how you can overshadow your competitors’ efforts:
Create pages to target users who are looking for alternatives to your competitor by optimizing for their brand names and the word “alternative” (e.g. “alternative to Facebook,” “alternative site to Ahrefs,” “Google Analytics alternative”,etc.).
While creating this page, your main aim will be, obviously, to promote your brand as a better solution and also to optimize the “alternative” keywords search to ensure you outrank your competition. Here you need to make sure you are not over-marketing your brand but instead giving the users genuine alternatives along with your brand.
To state this in an example, assume that you’re the SEO Content Writer for Ubersuggest and you create a page with the title “Top 5 alternatives to Ahrefs”, you can add names like:
You can use this tactic as a part of your content development strategy. You can also have guest posts and other authored contributions and optimize them for brand “alternative” keywords, thus ending up on valuable search positions that will fortify your brand against the “alternative searches” your competitor was targeting with their SEO efforts.
Your competitor’s users might be searching for better alternatives, giving you another reason to outshine the search results.
For example, you are a marketing automation software and you aim to position your company against HubSpot, a highly recognized competitor. You can try creating content that aims at ranking for keywords like “Hubspot issues”.
To achieve a top search engine ranking, you also need to invest in link building tactics. The above-mentioned tactics will increase the awareness of your product within your competitor’s customer base and people will start considering your brand as a solution.
There’s a famous saying – “All Good Things To Those Who Wait”, it’s especially true in case of SEO. So before answering the above mentioned question you need to have an in depth knowledge of your website and the SEO strategies your folks are working on. Once you’ve all that in place, you need to ask yourself:
Although investing in SEO can seem a lot of work and at times boring as well, SEO especially for SaaS has a better ROI owing to their long-term and cost-effective results. It is a continuous process and the fact of the matter is that the more you invest (time mostly), the greater is the ROI unlike paid ads where the results stop with the budget. In comparison to the efforts and investments put into SEO, it yields exponential results higher and for a longer term than the inputs.
For SaaS companies, it’s not just about driving traffic, but also about being experts in your market niche to the extent that whenever your potential customer faces any issue, they know they can rely on your content.
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