10 Ways to Optimize a SaaS Website for Revenue Growth

Community forums, accurate user journeys, competitive differentiators, and original graphics are all vital ways to optimize SaaS websites for better traffic, engagement, and conversion rates.

Attention all software-as-a-service (SaaS) brands: when was the last time you refreshed your website?

If it’s been a while, there’s a good chance some of your content has gone stale or organic rankings haven’t been as high as they could be.

With the SaaS market expected to reach a $230 billion market value by the end of 2024, you don’t want emerging competitors to snag your traffic.

That’s why we want you to learn how to optimize SaaS websites so you can surpass the competition with overflowing traffic and revenue.

We chatted with Helen Anne Travis, an independent SEO consultant for SaaS, B2B, and ecommerce brands, about the latest trends in SaaS website optimization.

Below, she shares her go-to SaaS SEO strategies and expert tips to help SaaS brands score higher search engine rankings and get the most bang for their marketing buck.

10 ways to optimize a SaaS website

A solid keyword list and insightful blog content are a great start. But if you want to maintain your position in the ever-evolving SaaS world, you’ll need to go a bit further:

1. Identify your unique value proposition (UVP)

DevSquad found that companies spend nearly $10,000 per employee on SaaS platforms. That’s some serious revenue potential.

So, how do you get brands and customers to choose your SaaS over your competitors?

The answer lies in your UVPs, and your homepage is prime real estate for displaying it.

Your UVPs are your SaaS brand’s biggest selling points. They should be clear, concise descriptions that highlight:

• Your product’s main benefits
• How it helps your customers
• Why it trumps your competitors

Put your UVPs front and center. They should be clearly visible on your homepage and other areas of your web content.

Use language that aligns with your audience, and avoid technical jargon unless your audience expects it.

Here’s a great example from our location-service SaaS client, Radar:

Radar crushes competitors by highlighting not one, but two UVPs: multiple location services in one platform and affordability. Plus, the SaaS brand backs up its UVPs with social proof. The impressive lineup of recognizable clients further reinforces their credibility.

2. Find relevant SaaS keywords to rank for

Keyword research helps your audience find your content on the search engine results page (SERP). This begs the question, how do you know which keywords to rank for?

Of course, you can leverage tools like Semrush or Moz to see which industry-relevant keywords are trending.

HawkSEM clients also get exclusive access to our proprietary marketing tech ConversionIQ, which attributes revenue to every content channel, asset, strategy, and keyword. 

But how do you know which keywords your audience will type in, and which ones place you in front of the most eager subscribers? The best way is to start with your audience and narrow down your keyword research to these high-value sources:

• Social media listening: Learn what your customers say about your product or industry. Chances are, they’re typing their thoughts into search engines, too.
• Community forums: Create a community resource to uncover specific branded keywords that help audiences learn more about your features (more on this later).
• Industry relevance: See what search engines suggest when you type random industry phrases into Google. Just don’t go too broad, or you could attract audiences unlikely to convert. (Long-tail phrases are easier to rank for because they tend to have lower search volume).

Assess keyword metrics

Once you zero in on your keywords, plug them into a keyword tool to get specs on:

• Intent: Informational intent helps you capture browsing customers, while commercial helps you convert those ready to buy.
• Difficulty: The higher the difficulty, the less likely you’ll rank on the SERP.
• Volume: High volume means more potential organic traffic, but less from people likely to purchase or download a demo.

Armed with a strategic keywords list, you can now plug them into your content. Add them to:

• Meta tags
• Blog headings (H1s, H2s, and H3s)
• Landing pages
• Product descriptions
• Pricing page
• Alt tags
• URL slugs
• Internal links

What if the fine details of keyword research feel too tedious? Just hire the HawkSEM pros to do it for you. We’ll make those rankings work overtime to unlock more website visitors and conversions.

Pro tip: Feature a list of your core competencies on your homepage and link each to a dedicated landing page, using keywords in the anchor text. This boosts your website’s relevance on the SERP.

3. Cultivate a supportive online community for your customers

SaaS tools have diverse features and functions that could take your customers weeks to learn how to fully leverage. Of course, your customer support team is on deck to assist with any inquiries.

Another great way to support your customers and optimize your website? Create a hub for existing customers and enthusiasts to connect and collaborate.

The benefits? Endless. For starters, there’s networking. Your customers will appreciate the opportunity to learn from and inspire similar brands and business owners.

Apart from that, members can exchange insights and best practices from others with a deeper understanding of your SaaS tools. This also functions like word-of-mouth marketing to reinforce your brand value.

The buzz will create engagement, and a digital marketing strategist can even monitor community feedback to help you improve your product.

Plus, user-generated content (UGC) is a big win for SEO. According to Search Engine Land, Google has a dedicated UGC search filter known as Google Perspectives. Why? Because UGC stands out as fresh, original, and unique content that distinguishes you from the competition.

SaaS UGC example: Squarespace forum

Squarespace is a SaaS website platform that helps brands create, manage, and edit web content for a monthly subscription fee. From templates and pages to post scheduling and analytics, Squarespace’s features are abundant.

Naturally, it takes time to get the hang of how it works, which is why they added a Squarespace Forum as a customer resource:

We’re big fans of their “Popular Contributors” section, which spotlights Squarespace’s most active participants.

If you click on the “Resources” category, you’ll see endless threads with thousands of views and high user engagement:

4. Map out your customer journey

Sales cycles for SaaS are often longer and more complicated than for other industries. This is because the customer journey could span months, and each audience funnel needs different types of content and elements to feel confident in your brand.

Sure, you could start a blog for awareness-stage audiences and ads for purchase-ready audiences. But that’s just one broad, lead generation strategy that doesn’t actually speak to the various audience segments that could view your website at once.

You should tailor your written and visual content to meet your audience’s needs at every stage of their journey.

Our advice? Start by mapping out your customer journey, from their first interaction on social media to the minute they subscribe to your product.

Awareness, consideration, and decision stages

If you want awareness-stage customers to consider you, you’ll need to demonstrate serious authority in your niche. That’s where Travis says thought leadership content comes in:

“My most successful clients have content that includes unique perspectives that only they could bring to the conversation,” she says. “This type of thought leadership content is so important to building consumer trust.”

And once your audience trusts you, they’ll consider your brand as a contender. But they won’t hit “subscribe” right away.

Moving through the customer journey, your audience will grow familiar with your brand but they won’t be ready to commit just yet. After all, your competitors have unique offerings to consider as well.

But a well-placed incentive (like a discount or free trial) could be the nudge they need. This is especially wise if they’re repeat site visitors.

Don’t forget to cater to your existing customers, too. Keep them engaged with regular updates and exclusive opportunities to connect with other customers. Hello, customer retention.

5. Use concise, descriptive language

Let’s say you own a project management platform like Monday.com. If you’re an AI engineering enthusiast, terms like “natural language processing,” “low-code,” and “associative memory” are music to your ears. After all, these very concepts are the foundation of your SaaS.

The only problem: your audience might not understand tech-speak. They just want to know how your product will make their lives easier. All that complicated language on your home page might leave a bad first impression.

Oh, and if your audience doesn’t know what you’re talking about, Google will notice, too. That’s because you need high-quality content for high rankings, which requires accessibility, clarity, and relevance to your target audience.

The only exceptions to include any jargon is if you have a detailed FAQs section to explain it or your audience research shows they speak the same language.

Travis shares a great tip for stellar SaaS copy:

Don’t rely on AI for content writing

ChatGPT is a staple for some SaaS brands since it’s easy to use to create quick content.

But Travis stands by human writing for a SaaS website:

“We’re seeing AI-generated copy everywhere now,” shares Travis. “But many of my most successful clients are bucking the trend. Their content and copy [are] delightfully human and tailored to their audience and their business.”

But SaaS is a techy space, which makes it easy to get hung up on the technical lingo. That’s why it helps to have an expert SEO strategist audit your existing content to refresh and revamp it as needed.

And once your written copy is primed for success…

6. Create accessible and engaging visuals to showcase your product

SaaS companies offer powerful features to help solve customer pain points, but it can be tricky to showcase their value before customers make a purchase.

Interactive visuals can do just that. Plus it helps enhance the user experience (UX) and your site’s on-page SEO.

Radar, one of our SaaS clients, once again demonstrates visuals that are a slam dunk for UX.

Here’s what we see as we scroll through the platform’s Geofencing features:

Notice the line that extends from the centered orange circle? That’s the line your cursor creates, and the live location is where your cursor rests.

Radar lets you navigate through its geofencing features in an engaging way that actually helps you visualize what it’s like to use the feature:

We also like the user-friendly calls to action (CTAs) inviting visitors to learn more about each feature, coupled with accessible and colorful icons that differentiate each.

The biggest benefit? Sky-high engagement. HubSpot’s latest report surveyed SaaS marketers and found that 41% of them saw the most engagement with original graphics.

Google also awards sites with exceptional UX, enough to consider them a Core Web Vital and ranking factor. Another way to enhance UX?

 

7. Make your website mobile-friendly

Mobile optimization is a must for all brands, but for SaaS companies, the stakes are even higher. That’s because 88% of customers will abandon a SaaS product because of poor UX.

And if your website performance doesn’t function on their mobile device, there’s a good chance they’ll lose interest in your SaaS product. Cue the high bounce rates. 

Beyond mobile responsiveness, desktop and mobile audiences alike expect lightning-fast load times. If you’re under five seconds, that’s a good benchmark.

However, if you really want to up the ante, aim for faster.

One Portent study found that websites with page load speeds of one second converted customers three times more than those that took three seconds or more.

8. Optimize page titles and meta descriptions

Page titles and meta descriptions provide crawler bots with helpful context about what your web pages are about.

Your title tag should include your primary keywords, while the meta descriptions should also give customers a rundown of what to expect from a specific page.

A good rule of thumb is to keep your pages’ title tags less than 65 characters and meta descriptions no more than 150 characters. You can use a tool like TechnicalSEO’s Google SERP Simulator to preview how your titles and descriptions will appear in search results.

Here’s a great example from restaurant management SaaS platform SevenRooms:

Pro tip: Include a call to action (CTA) in your meta description to help improve click-through rates (CTR) like OpenTable does: 

9. Share success stories from your clients

While client logos on your SaaS website homepage offer a glimpse of credibility, they’re not always enough to convince a discerning SaaS audience to commit.

Go beyond name-drops and tap into the power of real-life testimonials. Reach out to your happiest clients and invite them to share a few words about their experience with your product.

Here’s an example of customer testimonials from affiliate marketing SaaS Tapfiliate:

Better yet, you can create a case study that highlights the biggest value additions your product offered your client.

Travis says client success stories are worth their weight in gold but reminds us that potential customers want to know how you compare to competitors:

“Don’t just write [a case study] for the sake of writing one,” Travis says. “Rather than writing a generic case study, focus it on why the client chose you over the competition.”

For HawkSEM, it’s our exponential results in short time periods. Check out our case studies for examples:

A third option is to combine the results of a case study with testimonial-like summaries. That’s precisely what time management platform Toggl does on its home page:

Notice the tangible results highlighted in the headers, like 20% increase in profitability? Travis says these results make your product’s value more tangible to your audience:

“So many SaaS brands forget to connect the dots between their platform’s features and what they help users achieve,” says Travis.

She even reminds us to go beyond metrics and clearly identify functions that our competitors lack:

“Let’s say you’re a cybersecurity company and your tool includes automatic alerts anytime something fishy happens,” she proposes.

“Don’t stop there! Tell prospects what those alerts help them achieve. For example, you can stop a hacker in their tracks. Or you can prevent further data leaks. Those kinds of results are so much more tangible to readers.”

10. Protect visitors’ data

Your customers have thousands of pieces of personal data that they’ll share with your SaaS business to leverage its features.

But they’ll look for security features like GDPR compliance, data encryption, and multi-factor authentication to feel comfortable and secure from hackers.

Turns out, Google expects the same from your website.

You might get a ton of contact form submissions from scammers, or worse — a hacker that slows down or shuts down your website entirely.

That’s why here at HawkSEM, we always conduct regular checks for performance issues and security vulnerabilities to protect our clients and satisfy Google’s ranking factors.

What is SaaS website optimization?

SaaS website optimization is a collection of marketing practices designed to improve your SaaS website’s rankings on search engines. Unlike general search engine optimization (SEO), which speaks to better rankings for all brands, SaaS optimization focuses on factors unique to the SaaS industry.

For example, the subscription model of SaaS businesses demands a longer-term relationship with customers compared to the one-time purchases in ecommerce.

Since potential customers will invest more over time, it typically takes longer for them to get familiar with and trust your business.

This means two things: a longer customer acquisition process, and marketing tactics that cater to and nurture existing customer relationships.

Meira Primes, CMO at Cyber Sixgill, elaborates:

“It is so common for B2B SaaS startups to focus on short-term profitability at the expense of long-term success,” she explains.

“Even among more mature enterprises. I believe the SaaS world needs to move toward a mindset that fully internalizes the importance of investing in customer relationships.”

So, how does this unique sales cycle and customer relationship impact SEO?

For starters, you’ll likely target more informational intent keywords for thought leadership content and stronger brand authority.

Additionally, you might prioritize branded keyword rankings to cultivate a community among existing customers.

You’ll also need to nurture customer relationships with consistently excellent customer service. After all, customers are happy to pay 25% more to companies who go above and beyond with their customer service.

The takeaway

SaaS website optimization is a demanding business fraught with endless changes in competitor offerings, ranking priorities, and industry trends.

Pair that with an equally demanding customer base that expects a clear sense of authority and value from your product, and it becomes essential to optimize SaaS websites regularly for rankings, revenue, and continued growth.

With so many factors to consider, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by SaaS website SEO. With extensive experience as SaaS marketers and an average of 4.5X ROI for our clients, HawkSEM has the juice to drive your SaaS business further.

We know your software is a killer product. It’s time Google and your customers did, too. Let’s connect to get you on their radar.