8 Common SaaS SEO Mistakes That You Should Avoid

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the most frequently heard jargon in digital marketing. It is the process by which you seek to improve the traffic to a site in comparison to other sites.

A user types a search term and gets numerous results wherein one of the sites appears first. How does this happen? It is because the site has optimized content that gives it the top place in search engines.

When your content is not optimized, your site will not have the desired reach. This can happen for various reasons, which we will tag as mistakes.

Why SEO is Important for SaaS Businesses

Before moving over to learning about the mistakes, let us discuss why SEO is crucial for SaaS.

• It can help in the process of lead generation.

• SEO can boost organic traffic to your site.

• It helps in better conversion rates.

• It leads to improvement in sales and revenues.

• SEO can help to increase brand awareness.

• It helps to reduce your paid marketing expenses.

• It helps to rank better and have an edge over the competitors.

With so many benefits associated with SEO for SaaS, we can understand how well a business can perform with good optimization. 

But imagine what happens when this is not done right. It is possible that even SEO experts can commit simple SaaS SEO mistakes while planning a marketing strategy.

These SaaS SEO mistakes can be detrimental to the growth of your business. Therefore, you must learn what these are and take remedial steps to avoid them in the future.

Common SaaS SEO Mistakes to Avoid

The following are the common Saas SEO mistakes you should avoid lest you want more traffic:

• Poor content.

• Keyword stuffing.

• Focussing on the search engine rather than the audience.

• Copycat strategy.

• More focus on the design and fancy elements.

• Not creating links.

• Content objectives are not clear.

• Non-utilization of analytics.

1. Poor content

We saw above that it is content that needs to be optimized to rank better. With poor content, your site will not fare well. 

When you have good content, it can increase your conversion rates. Content is a vital part of SEO and can create a make-or-break impression.

The content you offer must be customer-centric so that it lands up in their search. You should also pay attention to the word count of your content. When the content length is too short, search engines do not pick it up at all. A minimum of 300-500 words is needed to join the ranking list. 

Therefore, both the quality and quantity of content matter the most for Saas SEO.

2. Keyword stuffing 

SEO content is keyword oriented. Always include keywords in your content. Make sure you research well before including the keyword; otherwise, it is better avoided since it cannot yield any results. 

The keyword should be appropriate and should be capable of being picked up by search engines. Many websites fail to understand the importance of keywords, and many others overdo it. Both these practices cannot produce healthy results.

You shouldn’t ignore keywords and, at the same time, not stuff your content with keywords everywhere. Unique content with keywords blended organically is easy to read and understand by the audience. Never introduce keywords just for the sake of doing it.

3. Focussing on the search engine rather than the audience

Search engines indeed play an important role in ranking your site. But for this purpose, you shouldn’t be creating content only for the search engine. Ignoring the audience in your content can prove to be a costly mistake. 

When created for search engines, the content looks monotonous without any personal touch. Your content should add value to the ultimate user of the product or service. If the reader finds it useful, it results in immediate conversions. 

As discussed, your content should include keywords organically and provide high-quality, informative content for the audience. When you provide what the audience needs, there is little probability that you will be missed. 

4. Copycat strategy

Good content can keep you ahead of competitors. To attain this, you should research top-ranking keywords and backlinks but should not copy the same strategies of your competing businesses. 

Copying in SEO cannot yield you the desired results. It can only be devastating in the long run. You may copy an inappropriate strategy. This can pull down the competitor’s business along with yours at any time.

Your SEO content should be directed to your audience and should reflect your business ideologies. This is unique for each business and should be focussed on that.

5. More focus on the design and fancy elements

Search engines pick up keywords and other important content on your site. Many companies make a mistake by including fancy design elements, videos, and such. They don’t realize that these are not picked by search engines.

Design is only a part of the page and does not define the entire content. Content and design should be complementary to add value to the viewer. 

You should include them only in moderation and should focus on good content. When including images, they are not named specifically to target the solution to a problem situation. So search engines cannot associate with them and will not be able to deliver results as needed by the audience. The crawlers cannot extract information from videos or images. 

6. Not creating links

Content is important, but equally important are the links associated with it. Even some experts make this mistake in Saas SEO content. 

They concentrate more on keywords and fill the entire content with all keywords they obtained through research. It is important to note that without links, these keywords do not add any value. 

You will have a lot of poorly ranking content. Links may take time to show results, but they are permanent. They can go a long way in bringing about a positive impact on your brand. 

To avoid this mistake, create links along with content so that you will have backlinks along with a good amount of content.

7. Content objectives are not clear

Your content should be targeted to the audience. It should offer a solution to their problem. Only then will the audience find your content useful. For this, there should be an identification of the problem first.

If your content is not goal-oriented, it cannot yield any results. If, after reading the content, your audience does not find any value, they will move over to relevant content. Your competitor stands to gain in this case. 

To avoid this, you should ensure that you make objectives clear in your headlines, meta description, and subheads. While searching for content, your audience can easily pick your site through the search engine results. You can make this happen only with a proper keyword research process.

8. Non-utilization of analytics

Analytics help to measure your success, i.e, they tell you how your sites are ranking. If you are not utilizing analytics, all your optimization efforts will be down the drain. Many businesses make this mistake. Analytics is like feedback; we know the importance of feedback in the growth of a business. 

Analytics help to identify what works for your site and what you should avoid. Now, several online analytical tools are available to help you track site behaviour effortlessly.

When you have an idea about how your site is faring, it is easier to create and optimize content accordingly.

Steps you should take to solve your SaaS SEO mistakes

• The user experience you give to the audience is very important. The first few seconds of landing on your page decide whether the visitor wants to continue with the site or not.

• Provide prominent information with minimal design so that it catches the attention of the user immediately after visiting your site. 

• The user experience expected of your site is that it should be simple, usable, easily accessible, credible, and valuable.

• Mobile SEO is also important and should not be ignored.

• Search engines like Google have moved to mobile-first indexing, which means that the mobile version of the site is used for ranking purposes.

• This implies that your site should be able to give a good user experience for mobile users as well.

• You also have tools to analyze how friendly your mobile version is so that you can implement changes for better ranking.

• Planning the design and content for both mobile and desktop versions can result in better optimization.

• Special importance is to be given to local SEOs also. 

• Not all businesses are global. When your customers are limited to a specific region, it is wise to optimize content for that category of people.

• You could plan to include keywords, meta descriptions, etc., that are region-specific.

• Do not forget to fix your speed issues. This is another factor that can improve user experience and Google ranking as well.

• The more speed, the more likely it will be picked up by search engines. 

• Check the tools available online to improve your speed.

SEO is Vital For all SaaS Businesses

Search engine optimization is vital for all online businesses. What is more important is achieving the optimization the right way. Mistakes can make optimization a failure, despite putting in lots of effort in creating content.

Hope the above points give an insight into the mistakes commonly made in SaaS SEO and ways to avoid the same. Following these can help to keep you on track.