The B2B SaaS Marketing Blog

The B2B SaaS SEO Playbook (That Still Works in 2025)

by 

Mike Smith

Last updated: February 28th, 2025

“SEO performance has plateaued – how can we squeeze a better ROI out of our SEO strategy?”

After implementing basic SEO best practices, most B2B SaaS companies don’t know how to continue growing. 

Marketers often try to solve the problem by increasing volume – publishing more content, building more links, and making more technical optimizations.

Yet increasing volume is counterproductive to reversing diminishing returns. You’ve probably already created content targeting the most impactful keywords. And you’ve probably already pitched the most obvious industry publications for links.

So investing the same resources into less impactful tasks won’t improve your SEO strategy.  

So how can you grow your SEO strategy?

Assuming you’ve executed the basics correctly (e.g., you’re producing high quality content, targeting right-fit keywords, etc.), the solution to pushing through an SEO plateau is concentrating your resources on removing inefficiencies and improving the performance of what’s working.

In this post, we’ll lay out the B2B SaaS SEO playbook that discusses the most common mistakes that harm SEO performance and our strategy to help B2B SaaS companies push through SEO plateaus. 

3 Common Mistakes That Plateau SEO Performance 

Most B2B SaaS marketers already have the basic SEO best practices in place before we start working with them, but these are the three most common mistakes that cause an SEO plateau.  

1: Using Traffic Rather Than Conversions To Measure Content Performance 

Traffic is often the primary metric used to measure SEO performance, but not all visitors are right-fit prospects. This is particularly true for enterprise B2B SaaS companies with a small pool of right-fit prospects.  

As a result, many of the B2B SaaS SEO strategies we audit drive plenty of traffic, and they may even collect plenty of email subscribers. Yet those visitors and email subscribers never convert because they don’t fit the company’s ideal customer profile. So, despite generating plenty of traffic, the SEO strategy doesn’t drive revenue. 

2: Focusing on SEO Tactics Rather Than Buyer Journey Impact

Assuming your page is reasonably well optimized, you’ll start to see diminishing returns as you continue making technical SEO optimizations. 

Instead, focus on improving the page to match the buyer journey. Specifically, improve the user experience, optimize the copy to address specific pain points, and calibrate the CTA to the prospect’s current buyer journey stage. 

Optimizing the page to better align with the buyer journey will increase a page’s conversion rate (which, therefore, improves the ROI of your SEO efforts). However, most marketers don’t realize this approach can also directly improve the page’s rankings.

A page that’s well optimized for the reader’s current stage of the buyer journey will produce more positive engagement signals, like:

• Increased time on page
• Reduced bounce rates (does the person click back to the search results, or do they dive deeper into other pages on your website)
• More organic links

Search engines want to rank content users like, so these positive engagement signals can directly impact rankings in the search results. 

3: Relying Entirely on Organic Reach Rather Than Actively Promoting Content

The amount of organic content published daily has multiplied in recent years, and search engines are relying on links more than ever before to determine which content is credible and respected by industry experts.

Unfortunately, earning links is more difficult than ever, as the increased content also means that writers have more options when choosing content to link to.

While the top few ranking posts tend to still earn links organically, getting into those top spots requires a handful of high quality links. 

This means you need to at least build a few quality links to get onto the first page of the search results before you can expect to earn links organically. 

Our SaaS Organic Authority Playbook

If we were starting a brand new website or a website with no SEO strategy, we’d implement the step by step approach outlined below. 

However, most SaaS companies already have some form of SEO strategy, so we use the steps below to audit their current SEO efforts and tackle the low hanging fruit opportunities first. 

For example, we usually don’t implement a brand new content strategy. Instead, we use the playbook below to optimize their content strategy and make it more effective. 

So rather than telling you the basics of executing each of the three components of SEO (content creation, technical SEO, and link building), we’ll explain the common mistakes we see that create inefficiencies, and how to solve them.

Step 1: Create 

Most of the B2B SaaS companies are already doing a lot of things correctly, like:

• Creating content that provides a helpful answer to the searcher’s question
• Publishing blog posts regularly (e.g., three or four times per month) 
• Optimizing each blog post for a specific keyword by including it in the title and even using an SEO grading tool like Clearscope or Surfer to optimize the content.

Despite following best practices, the problem is always the same: their content doesn’t convert. 

In our experience, these are the three most common reasons content doesn’t convert:

1. Prioritizing keyword volume: High volume keywords tend to target a broader, more beginner level audience. Some visitors may not even fit your target audience (e.g., they attract college kids rather than your ICP). Even if the traffic fits your ICP, high volume keywords tend to attract prospects at the top of the funnel, and will therefore take the longest to convert.
2. Exclusively publishing new content: Plenty of statistics show that most content doesn’t earn any traffic. Unfortunately, if search engines see that most of your content earns no engagement, the low engagement signals that your content is subpar, diluting the credibility and authority of your website. In addition, most of your conversions likely come from a handful of keywords, meaning you’ll likely see a better ROI refreshing and boosting existing content than creating new content.
3. Relying entirely on freelance writers or AI to create the content: Most content we audit for B2B SaaS companies is factually accurate but doesn’t provide unique insights or ideas. In other words, it regurgitates the same advice as the other content in the search results. So why should search engines rank it first?

To improve content efficacy, we first identify keywords and topics with the highest commercial intent. 

Here are some examples of high versus low commercial intent:

If you already have PPC data and/or are tracking conversions from existing content, you can use that to identify keywords with strong commercial intent.

Additionally, use the SaaS positioning canvas to understand who you serve, their specific problems at each step of the buyer journey, and your product’s unique selling point. 

This information can help you identify keywords your ideal prospects search at each stage of the buying journey. 

Specifically, you can find keywords by Googling the problem (e.g., “How do I get more enterprise sales demos?”) and then look at the keywords the top pages in the SERPs rank for.

Using this information, we create a list of keywords (ordered by an estimated number of total conversions each can produce) and then either update the existing content targeting each keyword or create new content. We have a more detailed resource on our step by step keyword research process.

When creating or updating content, we aren’t simply making the content longer and more in-depth. Instead, we focus on delivering advice that is more effective and helpful than the ideas offered in the other content ranking in the SERPs. 

It sounds simple, but if your content consistently provides better advice than your competitors, prospects will trust your brand more and actively seek out your brand’s content. 

The problem is that most freelance writers aren’t genuine experts on topics, and therefore can’t give the best advice on a topic. Our solution is to have a quality freelance writer interview a genuine expert and then distill that expert’s information into a helpful, organized structure. 

For each piece of content, we also refer back to the SaaS positioning canvas and highlight the product’s key differentiators within the content.

For example, when crafting the FieldInsight competitor comparison pages, we referred back to our customer research to understand why customers chose it over the competitors. Then, we organized those key differentiators into compelling copy.

This information is genuinely helpful to readers because it explains how their product is different from competitors so that readers can make a more informed purchase decision.

Step 2: Structure

Most SEOs measure traffic (the number of people who visit a blog post), but very few measure what visitors do after landing on the website. 

If the traffic landing on the website doesn’t eventually convert, it isn’t contributing to revenue.

Assuming you’ve completed step one and are targeting keywords that attract right fit prospects, optimizing the website structure is the next step to retaining and converting a higher percentage of traffic. Specifically, each page on your website should give prospects the next step in the buyer journey.

Rather than focusing exclusively on technical optimizations that you might see in an SEO tool, we focus on how we can structure the website to move users through the buyer journey more effectively.  

There are three ways we tactically retain and convert visitors:

• Site architecture design
• Content format optimization
• Conversion path design

Site Architecture Design

A common mistake that many SaaS websites make is creating a single page that explains what the product does without considering the unique pain points each buying committee member feels.

For example, a CTO has very different pain points from a senior engineer.

That’s why we use the authority architecture framework to structure each website. 

Here are the core pages outlined in the authority architecture framework:

• How it works (Features + Benefits pages and Use Case pages)
• Avatars (Check Signer, Daily User, Manager)
• Pricing
• Why Us
• Blog 
• More Resources 
• Support

We refer back to the customer research documents and ensure that there are pages for each product, industry, and avatar of the buying committee. 

Content Format Optimization 

Once you have the right pages on your website, the next logical question is how to optimize them for conversions.

Most SaaS marketers either Google around for templates of each specific page, or they look at other SaaS websites for inspiration.

Yet most templates and examples you find on Google probably haven’t been thoroughly tested. Even if the examples you’re looking at work for that particular SaaS company, it might not work for your product and audience. 

This is why we’ve spent years optimizing and perfecting templates for high value pages from both an SEO and conversion standpoint. 

Here are links to each of our specific templates, but we’ll also give you a brief overview of each:

• Product pages: Our product pages always presents features in a pain point > our solution > benefit structure as well as social proof and pricing.
• Comparison pages: Our comparison pages always have a feature comparison table, pros/cons list, ideal use cases/critical pain points, and key product differentiators.
• Blog posts/how-to content: We have a specific blog post structure template, but the content itself should also follow a general flow of paint point, common pitfalls, to step-by-step solution.
• Case studies: These should follow the format of problem, solution/execution, results, and lessons learned.

These templates give us a solid foundation and then we can test variations of each element to make it work for your audience.

Conversion Path Design

Plenty of SEOs spend time optimizing the page to rank, but not enough time optimizing it to get the prospect to take the next step in the buyer journey. 

While the page templates discussed in the previous section can help with conversions, this stage of the process takes it a step further by analyzing how each page fits into the broader buyer journey. 

Here are just a few of the specific conversion path design optimizations we apply:

• Progressive CTAs that match buying stage: For example, a TOFU blog post will give visitors a CTA to a MOFU case study. From the MOFU case study, they might see a BOFU CTA to schedule a demo.  
• Relevant internal links: We internally link to the best resource that takes the user to the next step of the buyer journey.
• Email nurture sequences: We create custom email sequences that are relevant to each content download.
• Retargeting campaigns: Each retartgeting campaign is relevant to the content a visitor engaged with.

These may not seem like optimizations that will improve SEO, but we believe they are relevant for two reasons:

• Increase the overall ROI of traffic earned: The more traffic you can convert or send further down the buyer journey, the better an ROI you’ll see on your SEO efforts.
• Positive engagement signals are essential for ranking: If search engines see that users stick around on your website and view more content on other pages, that’s a positive signal that your content is engaging and useful, meaning it will likely increase its rankings.

Step 3: Promote

We established that:

1. Links are more critical than ever before. Given the surplus of content in the SERPs, search engines rely heavily on links to determine a website’s credibility. 
2. Organically earning links is difficult as the surplus of content gives writers more content options to choose from when selecting a source to link to.

Actively promoting content to earn links is essential, but many SaaS marketers we speak with lament that their efforts rarely produce meaningful results.

They usually experience one of two problems:

1. The links they earn don’t increase rankings, or
2. Their outreach messages are ignored, and they don’t earn any links. 

Link building still works, but it requires a thoughtful approach.

Here’s the three-step process we use that allows us to consistently build links that deliver meaningful results:

• Identifying the right pages
• Identifying the right links
• Outreach process

Step 1: Identifying The Right Pages

Rather than building links to any page on the website, we identify “quick win” pages. “Quick win” pages have a high conversion rate and require minimal additional links to bump up to the top spot of the SERPs for the target keyword. 

By building links directly to high converting pages, we maximize the value of each link. We have a more detailed playbook on our overall link building strategy and how we determine and prioritize quick wins. 

Step 2: Identifying The Right Links

Not all links are equally valuable.

Instead of earning links from any website, we consider the topical relevancy, strength (authority), and traffic of the linking domain and the specific page that will provide the link. 

We also consider the type of link (we only target follow links) and its placement (we only target links placed contextually within the content).

Step 3: Outreach Process

Most link requests are ignored because the outreach messages are exclusively asks. Meaning, they create work for the recipient without providing a benefit that outweighs the required effort. Instead, we aim to provide a 5:1 ratio of value to effort. 

For example, we’ll offer to update the entire blog post if they include the link. The value of their blog post ranking higher far outweighs the effort required to swap out the text (which includes our link). Therefore, these pitches are often successful.  

By being more selective about the type of links we build, the pages we build them to, and aiming for a 5:1 ratio of value to effort in our outreach pitch, we’re able to consistently build effective links that provide a meaningful increase in the search results. 

If you want more help with link building, we have an in-depth guide that explains the step by step process of our link building strategy.

Step 4: Integration and Optimization

Most of the SaaS companies we talk to are already doing some form of content marketing, technical SEO, and link building. 

The problem is that each team is usually working in a silo, creating a disjointed SEO strategy.

For example, the content marketing team may not talk to the link building team. So the link building team may be earning valuable links, but they may be boosting content that isn’t contributing to demo sign-ups. 

Here are a few tactical ways we integrate the SEO strategy:

• Identify the highest converting blog posts and build links to them
• Structure website architecture to lead prospects from top of funnel to bottom of funnel blog posts
• Identify content angles and messaging that works on high performing pages and use it across other sections of the website. 
• Use conversion data to identify the top performing pages and then prioritize improving their technical performance. 
• Sync content refreshes with link building campaigns by timing updates with outreach.

A Case Study of Our Integrated SEO Strategy

A key principle of our SEO playbook is prioritizing implementations based on ROI, so we’ll walk you through an example of how we implemented this playbook for a client.

We worked with a field job management platform, and while they had some content, it was primarily targeting top of funnel keywords and weren’t driving conversions.

So our first priority was creating content for high commercial intent keywords, so here were a few of our first action items:

1. Creating competitor comparison pages: These pages targeted keywords like “(our client) vs (competitor)” and “(competitor) vs (competitor) vs (our client).” We used our competitor comparison page templates to implement these.
2. Creating commercial intent product pages: We created content for pages targeting keywords like “job management software,” “asset management software,” “field service management software,” as well as industry pages like “plumbing software,” “commercial HVAC,” etc.
3. Expanding BOFU blog content: We created content for informational keywords with high purchase intent like “field service automation.”

In addition to using our proven page templates, we also ran tests and made minor optimizations to each page, like moving comparison tables to the top of pages to improve engagement.

Only after executing the low hanging fruit did we move up the funnel and begin creating MOFU content with lead magnets. 

After implementing these changes to their SEO strategy, here were some of the results we saw:

• 186% increase in organic sessions
• 166% increase in organic users
• 2x demos from organic search
• 800% increase in organic impressions

What to Expect in The First 4 Quarters of Our SEO Roadmap

Most companies already have an SEO strategy in place. We create value by identifying and solving inefficiencies to make the strategy more effective.

During the first quarter of our partnership with clients, we audit the existing SEO strategy to identify inefficiencies and the most impactful efforts.

The first year usually involves tackling this low hanging fruit and redoubling efforts into what’s working.  

Rather than making drastic changes, we make iterative changes based on estimated impact.

To learn more about how you can improve your SEO strategy by removing inefficiencies and improving your current efforts, reach out to our team today.