How to Create a Winning SEO Strategy for your SaaS with AI-Assisted Content

SEO is one of the key strategies to drive organic growth and generate qualified leads. But with the ever-evolving nature of Google's algorithm and the volume of content being produced, how can you make sure that your SEO strategy stands out and will drive leads? Especially when you have a low domain rating and all the other disadvantages that come with being a new business.

And you're not alone thinking this. We talked to a lot of other early stage startups and there seems to be a common consensus these days regarding SEO:

"We're not sure SEO is worth pursuing for us. Especially considering how long it takes before getting a steady flow of leads."

To be honest, we thought the same here at Contrast – it was only after talking to SEO-experts that we decided to take the plunge. With success, because after only 5 months time, we've had over 1 million impressions on Google and signed several 10K+ ACV deals thanks to the articles we published.

So how do you get started with SEO? The answer lies in leveraging AI-assisted content creation and a structured approach to SEO. We discussed both in a recent webinar, that I will drop below.

This article is a summary of that same webinar and will show you the best ways to create a successful SEO Strategy for your business.

The Foundation of a Solid SEO Strategy

Before diving into the nuances of AI-assisted content, it's essential to establish a solid foundation for your SEO strategy. This begins with understanding your competitors, identifying common customer problems, and highlighting your product differentiators. By using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush, you can conduct thorough keyword research to understand the landscape and find opportunities for your content to shine.

How to create the right foundation for your SEO strategy:

1. Understanding Competitors: It's crucial to analyze what others in your space are doing. This includes identifying the keywords they rank for and the type of content they produce.
2. Identifying Customer Problems: Part of a strong SEO strategy is to address common problems your customers face. By understanding these issues, you can create content that provides solutions, which is more likely to attract and engage your target audience.
3. Highlighting Product Differentiators: Clearly articulate what sets your product apart from the competition. This could be unique features, better pricing, superior customer service, or any other aspect that makes your product stand out.
4. Keyword Research: Using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush, conduct extensive keyword research to find opportunities where your content can rank. This should include looking at competitor keywords, as well as identifying new keyword opportunities that align with your product and customer needs.
5. Creating a Keyword List: Compile a list of keywords that are relevant to your business and have a good balance of search volume and difficulty. This list will guide your content creation efforts. We'll show an example of ours later in the article.
6. Structuring Your Approach: Organize your keywords into clusters and types, and understand the intent behind each keyword. This helps in creating content that not only ranks well but also aligns with the user's stage in the buyer's journey.
7. Setting Up for Success: Before diving into content creation, ensure that your blog or content platform is properly set up. This includes having a blogging engine ready and understanding what you aim to achieve with your content.

By laying down these foundations, you set the stage for a successful SEO strategy that can drive targeted traffic, generate leads, and ultimately contribute to the growth of your SaaS business.

Prioritizing Your SEO Efforts

Not all keywords are created equal. To maximize the impact of your SEO efforts, you need to prioritize keywords based on difficulty, traffic potential, and user intent. By scoring each keyword on these metrics, you can focus on creating content that drives the most qualified traffic with the least amount of effort.

Understanding Keyword Intent

Before diving into content creation, it's essential to understand the intent behind the keywords you're targeting. Keywords can be categorized based on where they fall in the buyer's journey: top of the funnel (awareness), middle of the funnel (consideration), and bottom of the funnel (decision). By aligning your content with the appropriate stage, you can better meet the needs of your audience and guide them through the sales funnel.

Scoring Keywords for Prioritization

To determine which keywords to target first, consider creating a scoring system that evaluates:

1. Keyword Difficulty: Assess how challenging it will be to rank for a particular keyword based on competition and the number of backlinks you might need.
2. Search Volume: Look at the potential traffic a keyword can bring to your site.
3. Keyword Intent: Evaluate how closely a keyword aligns with your product offerings and the likelihood of conversion.

By scoring each keyword on these factors, you can prioritize content creation around those with the highest potential impact.

Content Types for Different Funnel Stages

Different types of content serve different stages of the funnel:

• Top of Funnel: Educational content that answers broad questions and introduces concepts related to your product.
• Middle of Funnel: How-to guides and best practices that help users understand how to solve specific problems with tools like yours.
• Bottom of Funnel: Product comparisons, alternative lists, and use-case-specific content that helps users make a purchasing decision.

Leveraging Product Knowledge

When creating content, especially for bottom-of-funnel keywords, it's important to leverage your unique product knowledge. This not only helps in differentiating your content but also ensures that it's tailored to highlight your product's strengths and address potential customer pain points.

For us it was Luuk, our head of product that created written content about the product. Later, we'd use this content then in other blog articles.

Continuous Optimization

After publishing, monitor your content's performance and optimize based on metrics like click-through rates (CTR) and engagement. If certain pages aren't performing well, consider updating meta titles, descriptions, and content to improve their search rankings and user experience.

In conclusion, prioritizing your content efforts in SaaS SEO involves understanding keyword intent, creating a scoring system for prioritization, aligning content with the buyer's journey, leveraging product knowledge, and continuously optimizing based on performance data. By following these steps, you can create a focused content strategy that drives traffic and conversions.

Creating SEO Content That Converts

When it comes to content creation, the goal is not just to attract clicks but to drive business. It's about producing content that aligns with what people are searching for and that ultimately leads to sign-ups, demos, and revenue. This means crafting content that addresses the various stages of the buyer's journey, from awareness to consideration to decision.

Understanding the Buyer's Journey

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu): Content at this stage should educate and inform. Examples include blog posts on "What is a Webinar?" or "The Purpose of Webinars." The goal is to attract visitors who are in the exploration phase.
2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu): Here, potential customers are considering solutions. Content like "How to Host a Webinar" or "Webinar Best Practices" can guide them closer to a decision.
3. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): This is the decision-making stage. Content such as "Best Webinar Tools for SaaS" or "Zoom vs. Contrast: The Ultimate Comparison" can be highly effective in converting readers.

Content Creation and Optimization

1. Keyword Research and Prioritization: Identify keywords based on competitors, customer problems, product differentiators, and product features. Prioritize them based on difficulty, traffic potential, and buyer intent.
2. AI-Assisted Content Creation: Use AI tools to draft content, but always add unique insights and product-specific information to make it stand out and resonate with your audience.
3. Repurposing Content: Convert existing resources, like webinars, into blog posts or other content formats to maximize their reach and effectiveness.
4. Templated Content: For comparison articles or alternative lists, create templates that can be easily adapted for different competitors or tools, saving time and ensuring consistency.
5. Glossary Pages: Define industry terms and link them to relevant articles on your site, providing a resource for readers and improving internal linking.

Conversion-Focused Content Elements

1. Clear CTAs: Include calls-to-action that guide users to the next step, whether it's signing up for a demo, downloading a resource, or starting a free trial.
2. Product Differentiators: Highlight what sets your product apart from competitors within your content to persuade readers of its unique value.
3. Social Proof: Incorporate testimonials, case studies, or user-generated content to build trust and credibility.
4. Engaging Visuals: Use images, infographics, and videos to illustrate points and keep readers engaged.
5. Value Proposition: Ensure that every piece of content communicates the value your product brings to the user.

Measuring and Refining Content Performance

1. Track Engagement: Use analytics to monitor how users interact with your content. Look for metrics like time on page and bounce rate to gauge interest.
2. Monitor Conversions: Set up conversion tracking to see which pieces of content are leading to sign-ups or sales.
3. Adjust Based on Data: Use the insights from your tracking to tweak underperforming content and replicate the strategies of high-performing pieces.
4. SEO Metrics: Keep an eye on organic rankings, backlinks, and search visibility to understand how your content performs in search engines.

By following these guidelines, SaaS businesses can create content that not only attracts visitors but also persuades them to take action. Remember, the key to conversion is providing value at every stage of the buyer's journey and continuously optimizing based on performance data.

The Importance of Internal Linking

A robust internal linking strategy can significantly boost your SEO efforts. By linking related content within your website, you not only improve user experience but also signal to search engines the relevance and authority of your pages. This practice can lead to better indexing and higher rankings for your targeted keywords.

1. Improves Website Navigation

Internal links help users navigate your website more effectively. By providing relevant links, you guide visitors to additional content they might find interesting, keeping them engaged and reducing bounce rates.

2. Distributes Page Authority and Ranking Power

Search engines use links to crawl the web, and internal links distribute authority throughout your site. A well-structured internal linking strategy can pass on the ranking power from one page to others, helping to boost their positions in search engine results pages (SERPs).

3. Enhances Pageviews and Time on Site

When visitors follow internal links, they're likely to spend more time on your site and view more pages. This increased engagement signals to search engines that your content is valuable, which can positively affect your rankings.

4. Boosts Keyword Relevance

Using descriptive anchor text in your internal links can reinforce the relevance of your pages for specific keywords. This helps search engines understand the context of your content and can improve your visibility for targeted search queries.

5. Supports Website Hierarchy

Internal linking establishes a hierarchy on your site, giving search engines an idea of the structure of your content. Your most important pages should have the most internal links pointing to them, emphasizing their significance.

6. Aids in Content Indexing

Search engines discover new content through links. A robust internal linking structure ensures that search engine bots can find and index all the pages on your site, which is crucial for newer or less prominent pages.

7. Increases Conversion Opportunities

By linking to pages that are further down the sales funnel, such as product pages or sign-up forms, you can lead potential customers closer to conversion. Strategic internal linking can guide users on a journey from informational content to pages that encourage taking action.

8. Encourages Content Rediscovery

Older content can gain new life through internal linking. By linking back to evergreen content or updating it with links to new pages, you can drive traffic to valuable posts that might otherwise be overlooked.

9. Helps Prevent Orphan Pages

Orphan pages are those without any internal links pointing to them, making them hard to find for both users and search engines. Internal linking ensures every page is connected within your site's ecosystem, preventing valuable content from being isolated.

10. Facilitates Thematic Relevance

By linking between topically related articles or pages, you create content clusters that reinforce the thematic relevance of your site. This can establish your authority in a particular subject area, which is beneficial for SEO.

Implementing Internal Linking

To harness the full potential of internal linking, consider these best practices:

• Link from high-authority pages to those that need a boost.
• Use natural, keyword-rich anchor text.
• Ensure links are relevant and provide value to the reader.
• Avoid overloading pages with too many internal links.
• Regularly audit your internal links to fix broken ones and update them as needed.

Tracking and Measuring SEO Success

To understand the effectiveness of your SEO strategy, tracking key metrics such as organic users, total traffic, engagement, and conversions is essential. Tools like Google Analytics and Search Console provide valuable insights that can inform your content strategy and optimization efforts.

Key Metrics to Monitor

1. Organic Traffic: The volume of users arriving at your site from search engines. A growth in organic traffic is a positive sign of SEO effectiveness.
2. Click-Through Rate (CTR): The ratio of clicks to impressions for your site in search results. A low CTR may indicate that your titles and descriptions need refinement.
3. Sign-Ups and Conversions: The number of users who sign up for your service or product. This is a direct measure of your SEO's impact on business goals.
4. Engagement Metrics: Time spent on page and interactions per visit. These metrics help you understand if your content resonates with your audience.
5. Backlink Quality and Quantity: The number of external sites linking to your content and the quality of those sites. Backlinks are a strong indicator of content authority.

Tools to Track SEO Success

1. Google Analytics: Provides insights into traffic sources, user behavior, and conversion rates. It's essential for understanding the user journey and identifying which pages drive the most value.
2. Google Search Console: Offers data on search performance, such as query rankings and CTR, and highlights issues that could impact your search presence.
3. UTM Parameters: Track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by tagging URLs with UTM parameters. This helps you understand which efforts are driving traffic and conversions.

Leveraging Data for SEO Insights

• Analyze Traffic Trends: Regularly review your organic traffic to identify trends and patterns. Look for correlations between SEO actions and traffic changes.
• Optimize for CTR: If certain pages have a low CTR, experiment with meta titles and descriptions to make them more enticing to users.
• Conversion Tracking: Set up goals in Google Analytics to track sign-ups and other conversions from organic traffic. This data is crucial for understanding which keywords and pages are most effective at driving business results.
• Engagement Analysis: Use engagement metrics to determine if your content is engaging. Consider the depth of interaction and time spent on your site as indicators of content quality.
• Backlink Assessment: Monitor your backlink profile for growth and quality. Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to analyze backlinks and identify opportunities for improvement.

Continuous SEO Improvement

SEO is an ongoing process. Use the data from your tracking efforts to inform continuous improvements:

• Content Updates: Refresh and update content based on performance data to keep it relevant and engaging.
• User Experience: Enhance site navigation and page speed to improve the overall user experience, which can positively impact SEO.
• Backlink Strategy: Develop a strategy to acquire high-quality backlinks, which can improve domain authority and search rankings.
• Keyword Optimization: Adjust your keyword strategy based on which terms are driving traffic and conversions.

Use AI to Accelerate Your SEO Strategy

In November 2023 we hit an inflection point: given the current trend, SEO would pay off – but only seriously in 6 months time from now. The question was:

How do we go faster?

Internally, we were working on a feature called Repurpose Ai. It lets you turn your webinar into new content, such as blog articles. Surely, something like this had to exist for SEO? Enter Penfriend.

We use Penfriend to help us create the outlines of most of our blog content. It helps us focus on keywords we still need to cover, write an article in the big lines and makes sure we hit the keywords we want to be hitting.

From here, we take it over. We enrich the article with our own writing, links and of course media such as products images and videos. This way, we were able to avoid the tedious work and focus on creating valuable content for our readers.

Our Tips for Using Penfriend.ai

Penfriend.ai is a tool designed to take your keyword and turn it into a well-structured article draft. Here's how to make the most of Penfriend.ai:

1. Inputting Keywords: Start by inputting your highest-priority keywords into Penfriend.ai. These should be keywords that are relevant to your business and have a good balance of search volume and attainable competition.
2. Reviewing the Draft: Once Penfriend.ai generates a draft, review it thoroughly. Look for areas where you can add unique insights, personal anecdotes, or specific examples that relate to your brand.
3. Adding Value: Use the AI-generated draft as a foundation, but always aim to add extra value. This could be through product knowledge, industry expertise, or addressing specific pain points that your audience may have.
4. Optimizing for SEO: While Penfriend.ai will structure the article around your keyword, ensure that you optimize the content further. This includes adding meta titles, descriptions, and strategically placing internal and external links.
5. Human Touch: Remember that AI is a tool, not a replacement for human creativity. Always infuse the content with a human touch by editing for clarity, engagement, and brand alignment.

The Role of AI in Content Creation

AI revolutionized the way we approach content creation here at Contrast. However, it's crucial to clarify that AI should assist rather than completely take over the content creation process. In November, a significant shift occurred when we started using Penfriend and other AI Tools. Leading to a noticeable jump in clicks and engagement. This approach allows for maintaining the human touch and ensuring the content resonates with your audience while benefiting from the efficiency and scalability that AI provides.

Streamlining Content Production

For repetitive content types, such as "X vs. Y" comparisons or alternative lists, AI can create templated blocks that can be reused and reorganized for different articles. This method allows for rapid content creation without starting from scratch for each new piece.

SEO Optimization

AI helps in keyword research, identifying opportunities, and suggesting related topics. It also helps in optimizing content for search engines by recommending meta titles and descriptions. AI can structure content effectively, ensuring it adheres to SEO best practices and improves the chances of ranking higher in search results.

Write faster with AI

AI can significantly speed up the content creation process. For example, when creating listicles or comparison articles, AI can generate templated content blocks that can be easily repurposed across multiple pieces. This approach saves time and ensures consistency in the presentation of information.

Repurposing Content with AI

One innovative use of AI in content creation is the ability to repurpose existing content, such as webinars, into new formats. AI tools can transcribe webinars and convert them into draft blog posts, social media snippets, or other content types. This not only extends the life of the original content but also caters to different audience preferences and content consumption habits.

Enhancing SEO with AI

AI can assist in keyword research by identifying opportunities and suggesting related topics that might not be immediately obvious to human researchers. Additionally, AI can help optimize content for search engines by suggesting meta titles, descriptions, and structuring content in a way that aligns with SEO best practices.

Personalized content

AI's ability to analyze data can lead to more personalized content. By understanding user behavior and preferences, AI can help tailor content to meet the specific needs and interests of different audience segments, increasing engagement and conversion rates.

Final Tips

Finally, here's a quick list of all the other ideas you could try to accelerate your SEO strategy:

1. Internal Linking: Regularly update older articles with links to new content. Aim for one link per paragraph and avoid placing links in the first and last paragraphs to keep readers engaged.
2. Video Content: Embed videos above the fold on your pages to ensure they are indexed by Google. Videos can supplement written content and improve user engagement.
3. Free Tools: Create free tools related to your product that provide value to users. These can generate backlinks as users link to your tools from their websites. Embed from Contrast was by far the most successful product we shipped to get backlinks from.
4. User Data Reports: Compile and publish reports using aggregated user data to provide insights into industry trends. These reports can attract backlinks and position your company as a thought leader.
5. Schema Markup: Implement schema markup to help search engines understand the context of your content, which can improve search visibility and rankings.
6. Content Prioritization Matrix: Assign scores to keywords based on difficulty, traffic potential, and buyer intent to prioritize content creation efforts.
7. Use of AI Tools: Utilize AI writing tools like PenFriend to generate first drafts of content, but always personalize and enhance the AI-generated content with unique insights.
8. Content Templates: For articles like "X vs. Y" comparisons or "10 Alternatives to Z," create content blocks that can be reused and reordered to produce new content efficiently.
9. Glossary Item Creation: Use AI tools to help rewrite and define industry terms, creating glossary pages that can be linked to from various articles.
10. Buyer's Guides: Develop comprehensive buyer's guides for specific job roles or use cases, showcasing how your product fits into the broader ecosystem of tools that benefit the user.
11. Content Editing: Edit AI-generated content to ensure it aligns with your brand's voice and adds value beyond what AI can produce on its own.
12. SEO Metrics: Focus on more than just clicks and impressions. Track sign-ups, demos, and other conversion metrics to ensure content is driving business results.
13. Content Repurposing: Turn webinars and other content into multiple pieces, such as blog posts, to maximize reach and engagement.
14. Meta Titles and Descriptions: Research competitors' meta titles and descriptions for inspiration, but craft your own to stand out and improve click-through rates.

By using these tips into your content strategy, you can create a strong and effective content marketing plan that not only drives traffic but also converts readers into customers.

Conclusion

Incorporating AI into your SEO strategy doesn't mean losing the human element that connects with your audience. It's about enhancing your capabilities and efficiency to produce content that not only ranks well but also drives meaningful business results. By prioritizing your efforts, leveraging AI tools such as Penfriend, and continuously measuring your success, you can create an SEO strategy that propels your SaaS business forward in the digital space.

We warn you though. Don't take this article at face value. SEO is more than what we discussed in this article. For example, technical SEO is a topic on itself worth exploring another time.

Remember, SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. With the right approach and tools, you can build a content engine that consistently delivers value to your audience and drives growth for your business.