SaaS SEO: A Strategy by Page Type and What Agencies Charge

SaaS SEO strategy by page type: the search behind each page

A SaaS SEO strategy starts from pages rather than keywords, because a software buyer's searches fall into a few repeating patterns and each pattern wants a page built for it. The SaaS SEO strategies on page one come as numbered tactics (seven in one title, six steps in another); here the work is sorted by the page each search needs, from the last search before paying back to the first question.

The four highlighted rows are where SEO for SaaS parts ways with SEO for a publisher. Their searches are small for any one rival's name, but the person typing [rival] alternative already pays for a tool in your category and is looking for a reason to move. A page that answers with the price and the trade-offs sits one click from a trial.

How to create an SEO strategy for a SaaS product

1. Collect the names your buyers search with. Your rivals, the tools you connect to, the jobs your product does and the teams that buy it. Sales calls, support tickets and lost-deal notes hold them in the buyers' own words.
2. Give each pattern one URL template and one layout. One per row of the table: /[rival]-alternative, /integrations/[tool], /for/[team].
3. Build from the bottom up. Pricing and alternatives first, then comparisons and integrations, then use cases, then posts.
4. Judge each page by the sign-ups it starts. Traffic tells you a page is found; trials tell you it works.

A SaaS SEO case study: this site, counted by page type

Submitator sells an automated submission service to founders, and this site is built on the same patterns. Here are four of the page types from the table, with the number of pages of each, counted from the site's data files every time this page is built.

Each row is one kind of page repeated: a new rival, a new directory or a new question becomes one more page of a kind that already exists, which is how a site reaches 181 guides and 52 alternative pages. The pages written for a named search outnumber the posts, 233 against 46. The plans sit on the home page, and the alternative pages roll up into one ranked comparison of all those rivals.

SaaS content marketing: content as the SEO channel

For a software company, content marketing and SEO are one channel seen from two ends. Content is how a site gets found for the questions buyers ask before they know your name; SEO decides whether those pieces get found at all. A SaaS content strategy built for search starts from the product: every post answers a question someone asks on the way to needing it, then hands the reader to the page that sells the answer.

What makes it SaaS content is that the product does the work in it. A post about a job your software does shows the job done, step by step, with screenshots; a template post hands over the template; a data post prints figures no one else holds, with their date, the way the agency prices further down are dated. Broad essays and trend pieces wait until the pages that sell have links pointing at them. AI answers draw on the same pages, and a separate post looks at which of them get cited.

B2B SaaS SEO and SaaS keyword research

B2B SaaS SEO: a committee, a shortlist and a long cycle

SEO for B2B SaaS writes for several readers at once. The person who searches is often not the one who signs: a user finds the tool, a manager compares it with two others and someone in finance or security reads the pricing and the terms. So B2B SaaS SEO needs a page for each of them: the use case for the user, the comparison for the manager, the security, pricing and terms pages for whoever approves. Enterprise SaaS SEO stretches the same work across more products, markets and reviewers, and three of the six firms in the price table below price an enterprise tier, from $10,000 a month up.

SaaS keyword research: measure the names, expect small numbers

SaaS keyword research measures the names from step one instead of starting from a seed word. A keyword tool, Google's autocomplete or, once you have impressions, Search Console says how often each pattern is typed, and calls with customers supply the wording, which is nearly always plainer than the wording on your site. Expect small numbers. Fifty searches a month from people comparing two products are worth more to a SaaS than five thousand for a broad term that a glossary already owns. How to read keyword difficulty on a young domain is in our keyword difficulty research.

Technical SEO for SaaS: a checklist for the app, the docs and the pricing page

SaaS technical SEO is mostly about keeping three kinds of pages apart: the marketing site that should rank, the app that should not and the docs that sit between them. As a SaaS SEO checklist:

• The app. Dashboards, settings and every logged-in screen carry a noindex or sit behind the login, so crawlers spend their visits on the marketing pages.
• The docs and help center. Indexable, one task per page and linked from the marketing site: users search how to [task] in [you], and evaluators read the docs before they buy.
• The pricing page. Plans, limits and the trial in the HTML as text, not inside an image or a widget that has to load first, with Product and FAQ structured data where the page carries prices or questions.
• Signup and trial. One indexable page that explains the trial; the steps of the signup form stay out of the index.
• Pages built from data. Integrations, templates and alternatives generated from one layout each need an address in the sitemap and copy of their own; a rival's name swapped into the same paragraph makes a page nobody needs.
• Rendering. Marketing pages served as HTML, so a crawler reads the copy on its first fetch.

SaaS SEO tools and mistakes

SaaS SEO tools: free ones first

A SaaS SEO tool stack can start at zero. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools report indexing, queries and clicks for their own engines. This site's free tools cover more readings: the Domain Rating checker returns Ahrefs' rating for any domain, yours or a rival's; the domain age checker gives the date a domain was registered; the link preview checker shows the title, description and image a shared link turns into. For the SaaS numbers around search, the MRR calculator works out monthly and annual recurring revenue and the Stripe fee calculator what Stripe keeps from each payment.

A paid SaaS SEO platform bundles rank tracking, a backlink index and a keyword database into one subscription; it pays once Search Console shows queries worth watching by the day. Software for finding and watching links we priced tool by tool, job by job when we counted the tools the top lists name.

SaaS SEO mistakes and tips

• Prices behind a form. A buyer searching your pricing wants a number; print one, even if it is a starting price.
• Every link pointed at the home page. Send links to the pricing, alternative and integration pages that sell.
• A redesign that drops the old addresses. Marketing sites get rebuilt often; redirect every old URL to its new one with a 301 so the links it earned carry over.

SaaS SEO agencies and consultants: what they charge

Rankings of the top SaaS SEO agencies fill page one for these searches; the table below is prices instead, read on each firm's own site, for anyone weighing an SEO agency for SaaS work against doing it in house. Of the 20 SaaS SEO agencies and consultants in Google's results for SaaS SEO and SaaS SEO agency, six print a price for their own work and the other 14 print none.

Entry retainers run from $3,000 a month at Percepture and Revv Growth to $7,500 at Virayo, and four of the six start at $4,000 or less. A year at the lowest of them comes to $36,000. The same fee buys different amounts of work. Revv Growth lists “10 blogs per month” in its $3,000 retainer, while Percepture's $3,000 package lists “Content Creation Support” at “2 / month”. Polaris' entry campaigns offer “a dedicated mid level SEO manager (minimum 5 years experience) supported by 2 SEO strategists day to day”. The highest published tier belongs to Polaris as well: its ENT packages run up to $25,000 a month.

Two of them print a price for an audit or strategy project on its own: MADX's AI Search & SEO Growth Plan costs $4,500 as a one-off that typically takes three to four weeks, and Polaris prices its SEO projects (an audit, technical SEO or a migration) from $6,800 plus VAT. The terms vary as much as the prices. Virayo's FAQ: “We have a 6-month commitment, after which our engagements switch to month-to-month.” MADX bills monthly and puts it this way: “Choose a 12-month term for the best rate, or a rolling contract with a 3-month minimum.” Taylor Scher Consulting's FAQ: “They are month-to-month and can be cancelled at any time.” And Revv Growth's comparison table reads “Rolling, no lock-in”.

SaaS SEO consultant or agency?

A SaaS SEO consultant is usually one SaaS SEO expert selling a senior person's time and judgment; an agency sells a team that also writes the pages and makes the fixes. Taylor Scher Consulting writes its FAQ in the first person (“you’re paying for access to me as a resource”) and starts its consulting from $4,000, for “Weekly consulting meetings” and an audit with a strategy guide, with its done-for-you content tier from $5,500. The agency entry plans in the table begin at $3,000, so the fee matters less than who writes the pages.

How to choose a SaaS SEO agency

1. Which pages would you build first? A SaaS SEO company that opens with a blog calendar before alternatives, comparisons and pricing has the order upside down.
2. Who does the work? Ask for the people by role. Polaris names a dedicated SEO manager on its entry campaigns, and Virayo lists the roles a growth engagement adds, from content strategist to link builder.
3. What does one month buy? Count the articles, fixes and links, then divide the fee by them.
4. What will you report? Trials, demos and pipeline from organic search by landing page, alongside traffic.
5. Are links in the fee? Revv Growth lists link building inside its retainer and Percepture sells it as an add-on. What each kind of link costs a SaaS has a post of its own.

A B2B SaaS SEO agency is the same offer pointed at software sold to companies, and Revv Growth, Taylor Scher Consulting and Virayo write B2B SaaS into their pricing pages: Revv Growth introduces its prices as how it structures “SEO engagements for B2B SaaS companies”.

Links for a SaaS: the directory layer, done for you

Every page type in the first table needs links pointing at it. For a new SaaS the first ones usually come from directories and launch sites, which list a product by rules they publish, and a launch week adds more, planned week by week. Of the 59 SaaS directories we submit to, 40 pass a followed link on our catalog's record, and 16 of those sit on domains rated DR 50 or above; the full list, with the badge rule for each, is on our SaaS directories page. Every other source of links for software, from app marketplaces to agency outreach, is priced in our post on links for a SaaS, and the services that sell links one at a time get a price census of their own.

Submitator files that layer for you: 30 directories you pick for $29, 60 for $49 or 100 for $79, paid once, each with a description we write to its own limits and every badge kept live, most delivered in 24 to 48 hours and every directory within 21 days at most.

SubmitMySaas, one of those SaaS directories, sells its Premium launch for $19 with “No badge or reciprocal link required” and a “Website link marked as sponsored”. Its free launch asks for the badge, and its pricing page says “Your website link is followed while your badge remains verified.” We file it with the badge, as one of the 30 you pick for $29.