If you are working out how to do SaaS SEO, begin with one line from Semrush’s guide to SaaS SEO by Carlos Silva: “SaaS SEO is all about personas and problems. You need to know who your target customers are, what they struggle with, and how your software can help them.” That sentence rules out the most common failure, which is publishing broad, high-volume explainers that attract readers who will never buy software.
The rest of this post walks through Semrush’s nine steps, and argues for the order in which a small SaaS team should actually work through them.
The nine steps, in one table
Semrush sets out nine steps. Listed plainly, they look like any SEO plan. What makes them SaaS-specific is where the keywords come from: pain points, landing pages and comparisons, rather than the topic as a whole.
| Step | What it involves | Where SaaS teams go wrong |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Goals and KPIs | Decide what organic search should deliver | Reporting traffic instead of sign-ups or pipeline |
| 2. Customer personas | Who buys, who uses, what they need | One generic persona for every page |
| 3. Competitors | Who ranks for your buyers’ searches | Only looking at product competitors |
| 4. Pain-point keywords | Searches describing the problem your product solves | Chasing broad definitions with no buying intent |
| 5. High-value landing pages | Keywords for feature, use-case and solution pages | Leaving product pages with no search target |
| 6. Comparison keywords | “X vs Y” and alternatives searches | Letting third parties own these results |
| 7. Better content | Pages that beat what ranks now | Rewriting the top result in different words |
| 8. On-page and technical SEO | Titles, structure, crawlability, speed | App and marketing site tangled on one domain |
| 9. Quality backlinks | Links from relevant, trusted sites | Buying volume over relevance |
Personas and goals come before keywords
A persona for SEO purposes does not need a stock photo and a name. It needs three things: the job title or role that searches, the problem they are trying to solve, and the words they use to describe it before they know your category exists. That last part matters most, because people with a problem rarely search for the name of the software category that fixes it.
Goals should be set at the same time. For a SaaS business, a useful organic goal is trial sign-ups, demo requests or qualified pipeline, not sessions. Our post on SEO KPIs worth tracking explains why traffic and impressions make poor headline targets. If a page brings visits but no sign-ups over several months, the persona or the intent was wrong.
Competitor research belongs here too, with one caveat. The sites that rank for your buyers’ problems are often not the companies you meet in sales calls. Publications, review sites and adjacent tools compete for the same results. Our guide on how to find your real SEO competitors covers how to separate the two lists.
Pain points, landing pages and comparisons
Steps four to six are the core of the method, and they map to three kinds of page. Each one meets the buyer at a different moment: when they first feel the problem, when they look for a way to solve it, and when they are choosing between two or three tools. A programme that covers all three moments, and links them together, gives a reader a path from the first search to the sign-up page.
Pain-point content. These are searches that describe the problem: how to do a task faster, how to fix a recurring error, how to manage a process that has outgrown a spreadsheet. A post that solves the problem honestly, and shows where the product helps, attracts the right reader early. Grouping these searches into topics is the job keyword clustering does well.
High-value landing pages. Feature, use-case and integration pages are usually written for visitors who are already on the site. Semrush’s point is that they deserve keyword targets of their own, because the searches behind them come from people much closer to buying. A use-case page that matches how a buyer describes their situation can outperform a blog post with many times its traffic.
Comparison pages. Searches comparing two tools, or looking for alternatives to one, come from people choosing. If you do not publish a comparison, someone else’s page answers the question for you. Write them honestly: name where the competitor is the better fit. A comparison that pretends your product wins on every row is easy for a buyer to spot and easy to dismiss.
Content, technical work and links
Step seven asks for content better than what currently ranks. For SaaS, “better” usually means more specific: real screenshots of the workflow, a worked example with numbers the reader can follow, an honest account of limitations. A content gap analysis shows which topics competitors cover that you do not, but filling gaps is only half of it. Each page has to add something the existing results lack.
Technical SEO for SaaS has a recurring problem: the marketing site and the application often share a domain, and app pages, login screens and parameter URLs leak into the index. Keep the app out of search, keep the marketing pages crawlable and fast, and make sure feature pages are reachable through internal links rather than only through navigation menus.
Links come last in Semrush’s list, which is the right order. Pages that solve real problems and comparisons that are genuinely useful earn citations more easily than thin product pages. Relevance matters more than volume.
How to do SaaS SEO with a small team
The received wisdom is that a SaaS blog should start with top-of-funnel education to build authority, then work down towards the product. For a small team with limited writing time, the reverse order is usually stronger. Start with landing pages and comparisons, where intent is highest and competition is often thinner. Then add pain-point content that links into those pages. Broad definitions come last, if at all.
Measure each layer separately. Landing pages and comparisons should be judged on sign-ups and demo requests. Pain-point posts should be judged on whether readers move on to a product page, not only on their own conversion rate, because they sit earlier in the journey. Review the split every quarter and shift writing time towards whichever layer is producing qualified users.
Here is the limitation. Semrush’s framework is a planning model, not a measured study of what works for SaaS companies, and it comes from a vendor that sells SEO software. It also cannot tell you how long results will take, which depends on the domain’s existing authority, the competition in the category and how quickly the team ships. Use it to decide what to build first, and judge it on your own sign-up data. More planning guides sit in our strategy archive.
Frequently asked questions
How do you do SaaS SEO?
Start with personas and their problems, set goals tied to sign-ups or pipeline, research competitors, then target pain-point keywords, landing pages and comparison searches before broad topics.
What is different about B2B SaaS SEO?
The keywords come from buyer problems, feature and use-case pages, and comparison searches, and success is measured in trials, demos and pipeline rather than traffic.
Should SaaS companies publish comparison pages?
Yes. People searching comparisons are choosing a tool. If you do not answer that search, a third party will. Keep the comparison honest.
Which KPIs matter for SaaS SEO?
Organic trial sign-ups, demo requests and pipeline influenced by organic visits. Traffic is a diagnostic, not the goal.
The takeaway Build SaaS SEO from personas and problems. Landing pages and comparisons first, pain-point content second, broad topics last, and judge every layer on sign-ups.
