Three Core Elements of a SaaS SEO Strategy

Today, I'm going to break down the three core elements of a successful SaaS SEO strategy:

The conversion hub
The demand hub
The education hub

For some products more than others, the top of the funnel (education hub) and the bottom of the funnel (conversion hub) have a much shorter distance. This means the education hub can play a different role depending on your product and audience.

For example, someone searching for "What is SEO?" is not far off purchasing a keyword research tool. But someone searching for "What is data analytics?" is oh so far away from purchasing a complex data architecture software like Snowflake.

In that environment, your education hub is a long-term play that must double down on quality, memorable content that keeps your reader coming back despite the long sales cycle.

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Let's break down all three hubs in brief:

1. The conversion hub

Your website is your salesperson who never sleeps.

Make sure you have:

👉 A clear message

👉 A clear description of what you do

👉 Varied positioning pages for use cases, industries, personas

👉 Architecture that'll let your SEO strategy fly

Doing this well relies on a solid understanding of your product and target customer. Invest your time heavily in these.

2. Demand create/capture hub

This is your best opportunity to show off your product to an audience who's open to hearing about it.

Create your content that converts:

> Your JTBD stuff

> Your "Best tools for X"

> Your "Alternatives to [competitor]"

> Your "[Competitor] vs [Competitor] vs [You]"

If there are 1,000s searching for your product each month. Why would you not try to capture them?

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This stage is where you are most likely to move someone in your target audience from "aware they sort of have a problem" to "aware there's a product out there that can solve their problem".

3. Education hub

These are where you communicate with your least conversion-ready visitor.

Those searching for things like "what is X? or "X benchmarks" or "X strategies".

This is your opportunity to:

👉 Win backlinks via new data (e.g. target other content people in your industry with new survey data you've done to earn backlinks organically)

👉 Educate the market to your POV (e.g. create conversation in favor of the change you want to see with thought leadership content)

👉 Build topical authority so that all your content ranks (ie. write top of funnel content to show Google you're the expert in this topic, therefore boosting your ranking for commercial-intent keywords)

👉 Get content downloads/signups (e.g. create downloadable templates in Excel or Canva)

👉 Build brand affinity (write thought leadership like Animalz)

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This stuff needs to be 🔥 in a world where B2B content teams are leaning into B2C-style media.

How to improve SEO for SaaS companies

To improve your SaaS SEO strategy look at your strategy holistically. If you're weak in any one of these three areas—education, demand, or conversion—then that gap likely explains why you're not getting the results you want.

If you can't build all three at once, I'd highly recommend starting at your conversion hub. Any traffic you build will fall on deaf ears without it.