B2B SaaS SEO: 10 Steps for Sustainable Growth (With Case Studies)

B2B SaaS SEO is changing—again. SEO, by nature, has always been in a constant state of development. This time, Large Language Models (LLMs) are shaking things up, and no doubt, AI overviews (AIOs) are just the beginning. Thankfully, change brings opportunities for those willing to adapt.

‍

Why is SEO so important for B2B SaaS businesses?

When done right, SEO helps B2B SaaS companies build a steady pipeline of qualified leads, reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC), and drive revenue growth.

Take ForUsAll, a small business 401(k) solutions provider. Using technical, content, keyword, and link building strategies, the business saw a 6x increase in qualified leads from organic search in under a year.

This organic growth enabled the company to scale back ad spend by 90% and generate "an all-time high number of qualified leads on a fraction of the marketing budget."

SEO is effective, in part, because it builds brand authority and creates trust between business and audience. Buyers and search engines reward brands that consistently publish valuable, original, and in-depth content.

SEO also shapes today's buyer journey. B2B Buyers use content to self-educate long before speaking to a salesperson. In fact, Gartner data shows that 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience altogether. How does this impact you? When your SaaS brand appears early and often throughout a prospect's self-guided journey, it remains visible during buyer's critical decision-making moments.

A robust B2B SaaS SEO strategy helps your brand get discovered and guides buyers at every step of their journey.

‍

How to build a winning B2B SaaS SEO strategy

Now that we've touched on the importance of B2B SaaS SEO, let's take a look at 10 important actions, along with a few tips on how to implement them.

‍

1. Build a strong SEO foundation

A strong B2B SaaS SEO strategy starts with a rock-solid foundation. Focus on these aspects for the highest rewards:

• Fix technical SEO issues: Improve search engine visibility and user experience by removing competing pages and duplicate content, fixing broken redirects, consolidating overlapping content, and ensuring that your site is structured properly.
• Improve site speed and Core Web Vitals: Google uses metrics like load time, interactivity, and visual stability to gauge user experience. If your pages load quickly and reliably, Google will reward your website and boost your rankings.
• Structure URLs and internal links properly: Use clean, logical URLs and ensure your pages link to each other in a way that makes sense for both people and search engines. This improves crawlability, boosts user experience, and ultimately enhances your site's overall search performance.
• Leverage schema markup: This is a special code that helps search engines understand your content and its structure. It can lead to higher click-through rates and rich snippets—a Google search result that includes additional information beyond the standard title and description, like ratings, images, or event details.
• Prioritize mobile-friendliness: Most users browse on their phones and tablets, which is why Google uses a website's mobile version for indexing and ranking in search results, known as mobile-first indexing. So, your site has to look and work great on phones and tablets for Google to prioritize it in the SERPs.
• Use the “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness” (E-E-A-T) Framework to your advantage: Google uses its E-E-A-T framework to evaluate a website’s content quality and credibility. Higher scores on the framework rank higher in the SERPs. Incorporate E-E-A-T signals - expert quotes, detailed author bios and profile pages, editorial review policies, reviews and testimonials, supporting multi media - into every web page and every piece of content you produce.

These are some of the core technical SEO actions that helped one of SaaS client recover organic traffic and pipeline:

To learn more about Technical SEO, read: Technical SEO for SaaS: 3 Big Issues (And How To Fix Them)

‍

2. Produce content that speaks to your ICP

First, define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). When you understand your ideal buyer and the language they use to define problems and search for solutions, you're off to a great start, because then you can segment buyers by awareness levels:

• Problem-aware prospects (top-of-funnel): They know something's off (e.g., unqualified leads, high churn rate, etc.), but don't know how to fix it yet. Here, you can shine by creating educational content that addresses their problems. Give them a way to articulate their pains and introduce the broader category of solutions available to them (yours included). These can be guides and how-to blog posts.
• Solution-aware prospects (middle-of-funnel): You've helped these buyers define their problems, you've shown them the solutions, and now they have a need—"Hey, I need a CRM" or "I need a HIPAA-compliant video platform"—but they're unsure which solution is best. This is where buyer's guides and feature breakdowns perform great. Show off how your product resolves their needs and brings them value.
• Product-aware prospects (bottom-of-funnel): They're in the final selection between you and maybe one or two other vendors. This is the moment for dedicated value studies and comparison pages, like "Our Product vs. Competitor X," data, testimonials, and hard ROI proof to tilt the scales in your favor.

Understand who you're targeting, how they express their pains, and how they search for solutions. Then, create content that uses the same language and phrases they'd type into Google for every stage of the buyer's journey.

We cover this concept in great detail in this SaaS Content Marketing guide.

‍

3. Focus your efforts on high-intent keywords

A high-intent search is when a user shows clear buying signals. Here's how to get the most out of high-intent keywords:

• Target long-tail, problem-solving queries:
  • E.g., "How to automate invoice tracking in SaaS," "How to reduce lead qualification time."
  • These buyers aren't just browsing, they're actively looking for a fix. Solve their problem better than anyone else, and you're halfway to a closed-won deal.
• Capture competitor comparisons and alternatives:
  • E.g., "HubSpot vs Marketo," "[Your Product] alternatives."
  • These are bottom-of-the-funnel queries. Buyers know the available solutions and they’re trying to decide which one's a better solution for them. Show them why you're the obvious choice.
• Target industry-specific, bottom-of-the-funnel terms:
  • E.g., "Best HIPAA-compliant video software," "Top GDPR-compliant lead management tools."
  • Highlight why your product is the best solution for your target audience.

Conduct intent-based keyword gap analysis: See which high-intent terms your competitors rank for but you don't, then build or optimize content to fill that gap. If a competitor ranks for "AI email automation pricing," craft a better page for that query.

Pro Tip: Don't let low search volume deter you. If a query has high-intent, searchers are primed for a solution, so even 50 monthly searches can turn queries into pipeline.

Case study: SPOTIO generated 1,700+ demos and $2.8M in new ARR from organic search.

‍

4. Implement product-led SEO

A product-led approach leverages your product as the primary driver of acquisition, activation, and retention, rather than purely relying on marketing or sales tactics. It centers on users experiencing the product's value firsthand via demos, free trials, or freemium models.

Product-led SEO extends this mindset to your content strategy. Cater to feature-focused keywords and weave your solution into every piece of content so prospects can actually see, try, and trust it from the very first click.

For example, imagine a user searching for "how to automate invoice processing." Instead of a generic blog post, you publish a guide that includes an interactive demo, video tutorial, or screenshots walking through exactly how your product handles invoicing. Doing this can boost engagement, build trust, and increase conversion rates by clearly demonstrating the use case of your SaaS.

Give your audience a chance to experience your product and how it works to solve their issues without going through an entire sales cycle to experience the value.

‍

5. Capture every SERP touchpoint

Search results are noisy.

In the past, if you searched for a valuable keyword you'd see an ad pack and a list of websites (your SaaS and 9 direct competitors).

Today, there are a host of SERP features - AIOs, People Also Ask, video carousels, aggregators such as G2, solution grids, etc - competing for attention. This is why SERP CTRs are decreasing for a lot of queries.

As a result, you need to broaden the scope of your SEO engagement outside of just ranking your website.

You need to be targeting as many of the available SERP touchpoints as possible. This will help boost visibility, create awareness across various channels, and guide prospects more effectively toward conversion.

Here's how:

• ‍Audit all SERP touchpoints: Identify all the available touchpoints - AI Overviews, Reddit, video carousels, G2, Capterra, and popular industry listicles - for your most important keywords.
• Optimize your presence on third-party review sites: Sites like G2, Capterra, and Software Advice often rank highly for "best software for" queries and are cited in LLM results. Optimize your brand profiles on these sites, and sponsor placements to make your brand more visible to high-intent buyers.
• Engage in discussions: People often trust real discussions more than ads. That's why Reddit, Quora, and the likes are great avenues to provide valuable, non-promotional insights that speak directly to your buyers. Plus, sources like Reddit are included in LLM training data.
• Create video content: YouTube is the world's second-largest search engine, so it pays to optimize your YouTube presence. You can also embed your videos into relevant blog posts or product pages to improve SEO and user engagement. These videos can also rank in SERP video carousels and/or get referenced in AIO and LLM results.

I discuss this strategy in greater detail in this LinkedIn post.

‍

6. Use the hub-and-spoke content model

The hub-and-spoke model is a way to structure content production and publishing. The "hub" content features an overview of a main topic and links to supporting "spoke" articles that go into more depth. This structure provides a logical education experience for your audience, demonstrates expertise, and improves internal linking, which signals to search engines that you've covered the subject thoroughly, ultimately building authority and trust for your site.

Here's how to make this model work for you:

• Create a central 'hub' page covering the overarching topic: E.g., "B2B SaaS SEO."
• Create 'spokes' for related short- and long-tail keywords: E.g., "Fintech SEO", "SaaS Inbound Marketing" and "SaaS Content Marketing."
• Cover topics thoroughly: Create multiple supporting pages that explore different angles of a subtopic, featuring expert insights. This approach signals to both search engines and your target audience that your content is authentic, comprehensive, and valuable.
• Connect related content through internal links: Build a cohesive content structure that makes your website easier for visitors to navigate and for search engines to understand.
• Include relevant and helpful calls-to-action: Guide your audience through your content with logical connections—like this.

Looking for a full breakdown? Read: How to Master the Hub and Spoke Strategy for SEO Success.

‍

7. Optimize content for AIO and LLM visibility

We're seeing LLM referral traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini growing quickly across our portfolio of B2B SaaS clients.

Currently, it accounts for anywhere from 0.5-3% of total website traffic. While this a small overall percentage of traffic, it is growing faster than most other channels, and is starting to generate new trials and demos for clients.

LLMs pull data from various sources on the web—here's how to boost LLM visibility:

• Optimize your content for natural language queries: People search in natural, conversational language, such as "What's the best sales automation tool for mid-sized teams?". So, structure your content to mirror how users ask questions, use full-sentence queries, and write conversationally.
• Use structured data (schema markup): Schema markups help search engines understand a website's content, and, as a result, help a website rank higher. Schema markup makes it easier for LLMs to understand what your product does and how it's relevant to the query.
• Get cited in trusted industry sources: LLMs pull data from authoritative and reputable publications, listicles, software review platforms, and sites like Wikipedia. Getting mentioned in these sources your brand enters LLM training data sets and improves LLM visibility for important queries.
• Understand where LLMs get their information: Ask ChatGPT or another LLM which sources it uses for your key software-related queries, then tailor your PR and content strategy to secure placements on those high-value platforms to improve your search visibility via LLM citations.

Plan how you want LLMs and other emerging search technologies to extract, summarize, and serve your content and optimize your strategy beyond Google's algorithm.

If you'd like to dive deeper into this topic, I've written multiple LinkedIn posts about LLM optimization here, here and here.

‍

8. Take advantage of backlinks and digital PR

Backlinks are links from one website to another that serve as endorsements, boosting a site's credibility and search engine rankings. But beware: not all backlinks are created equal. Links from authoritative, relevant websites carry significantly more weight than those from low-quality or unrelated sources.

Here's how to grow your backlink profile to improve your rankings:

• Set accurate backlink targets: Identify which of your existing high-intent content assets are primed to attract additional backlink citations. Then, determine the number and quality of backlinks you need to rank your assets higher.
• Guest post on industry-relevant websites: This isn't just for links—it also positions your brand as a thought creator in front of an interested audience. Two birds, one post.
• Create newsworthy content: Create content that media outlets will reference in their content to earn valuable backlinks. Think unique data reports, and in-depth case studies featuring creative solutions, ideas, insights, and philosophies.
• Get featured on relevant “best software for X” lists: Aim to secure placements on curated lists. These lists can generate quality referral traffic and feed data into large language models (LLMs).
• Create linkable assets: Publish content that ranks for queries that will be cited in other content. Eg: "sales statistics". Authors look for stats to support their points of view and provide a reference link. Ranking for high-volume linkable topics can create a passive link building machine.

9. Refresh your content

Regularly updating your content helps improve rankings, boost engagement, and increase conversions. Search engines prioritize relevant, up-to-date information, and so do potential customers.

Many of your competitors overlook this, giving you a clear advantage when you consistently refine and optimize your content.

Here's how to keep content fresh and rankings strong:

• Capitalize on low-hanging keywords: Use a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to filter keywords your website ranks for. If you rank in positions 4-15 of the SERPs you’re close enough to the top spots that it’s likely you can rank higher with some minor optimizations and content improvements.
• Optimize for conversion: Identify assets that are already ranking well and generating quality organic traffic. Look for opportunities to add relevant CTAs and social proof to extract more conversions from the traffic you're already getting.
• Refresh outdated pages: Update outdated content with new data, examples, and fresh insights to maintain relevance and rankings.
• Monitor content performance: Double-down on the formats and topics that work, and optimize what doesn't.
• Test title tags and meta descriptions: Small changes in headlines, descriptions, and calls-to-action can have a big impact on SERP click-through rates (CTRs).

If you stay proactive and refine your content regularly, you'll maintain your search visibility and stay ahead of competitors who are slow to adapt.

‍

10. Focus on the metrics that matter

Track the right SEO KPIs to ensure your SEO strategy delivers real business impact, not just rankings:

• Organic traffic growth: Gauge traffic growth to key URLs and directories to ensure content efforts are moving the needle.
• Keyword rankings: Track rankings across priority keywords. This is a leading indicator of SEO performance.
• Click-through rates (CTR): Monitor CTRs to identify queries where noisy SERPs may be limiting or eroding traffic potential.
• Conversion rates (CRs): Track the percentage of organic visitors who turn into trials, demos, and customers.
• Engagement rates: Assess how long visitors stay and engage with your content.
• LLM referral traffic and AIO placements: Monitor how your content performs in AI overviews and on platforms powered by LLMs. These platforms can drive referral traffic and conversions.
• Revenue and ROI: Track new revenue generated from organic search.

‍

Drive growth with B2B SaaS SEO

B2B SaaS SEO is a long-term investment that, when executed effectively, drives a consistent stream of demos and trials, accelerates sales cycles, and increases annual recurring revenue (ARR).

In summary, focus on these 10 key aspects of SaaS SEO to drive sustainable growth:

• Optimize technical SEO and site architecture to improve user experience and enhance your site's organic search potential.
• Define your ICP, analyze their search behavior, and create content that matches their language and keywords at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
• Target high-intent keywords to reach searchers looking for, and comparing solutions, and drive a steady flow of qualified leads.
• Prioritize product-led SEO and showcase your product within content to reduce friction and drive engagement.
• Target every SERP touchpoint to maximize visibility and drive continued growth despite search being disrupted by AI.
• Use the hub-and-spoke model to establish authority, build trust with your audience, and signal relevance to search engines.
• Build backlinks that boost site authority, drive targeted referral traffic, and improve chances of LLM placement.
• Go beyond Google's algorithm by optimizing content for LLMs to get featured in AI overviews and generative search.
• Monitor, refresh, and optimize your content to to maintain rankings and maximize traffic and conversion growth.
• Track KPIs that impact discoverability and revenue to ensure SEO efforts contribute to business growth.

If you'd like to build a sustainable SEO growth engine for your B2B SaaS, book a discovery call with me.

‍

‍