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Powering On-Page SEO and PPC to Boost SaaS Website Traffic

The rise of AI set off a series of shockwaves in the SEO services industry while handing Google the first serious threat in years to its preeminence. In response, the search and web ads giant is revamping its search engine results page (SERP).

Many companies are re-evaluating their marketing strategies, from social media marketing to SaaS SEO strategy. From this point on, it will be all the more essential to acknowledge Google’s changes and the role of AI in powering on-page search engine optimization (SEO) and Pay-per-click (PPC) ads to boost SaaS website traffic.

Google’s New SERP and Search Generative Experience (SGE)

Google’s new AI search experience, Google Search Generative Experience (SGE), integrates AI into the SERP. Instead of offering organic search results and featured snippets above the fold, organic results are further down the page and may impact non-paid search traffic and click-through rates.

While changes are still in play, the upshot for SaaS businesses is that Google’s search results pages will probably send less direct traffic to websites. At the same time, increased use of AI in an already competitive space will likely drive up keyword and ad prices.

Let’s look at an update.

What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO refers to optimizing elements on a website to improve its visibility, technical performance, and ranking in search engine results. On-page SEO now leverages AI tools for optimizing keywords, content relevance, and enhancing user experience.

Improving On-Page Search Rankings

With so much pressure to adapt to an AI marketing strategy, it can feel overwhelming where to start. A good strategy is to focus on shoring up the SEO basics, starting with technical SEO. The good thing about technical SEO techniques is that they give marketers a checklist of specific actions to improve SEO.

Technical SEO checklist for better search engine rankings

Technical SEO focuses on improving a website’s speed, security, mobile-friendliness, and user experience. Here are a few website elements that search engine bots evaluate:

Positive user experience: A positive user experience can lead to better search engine rankings; a poor user experience can negatively impact SEO efforts.

SaaS Content optimization: Optimizing content for organic traffic from specific search engines can help you rank higher in search results.
Canonicalization: This technical SEO approach involves choosing a preferred URL for a website’s content to avoid duplicate content issues, which can harm search engine rankings.
Mobile-friendliness: Good mobile UX is a ranking signal on most search engines, including Google and Bing. Mobile-friendly sites will show up higher in search results.

Page speed: Page and site speed are primary considerations for search engines. A technical SEO audit can help pinpoint where to improve on-page optimization.
Crawling and indexing: When search engines can crawl your website easily and quickly, it leads to better indexing and ranking of your website in search engine results pages (SERPs). Create XML sitemaps, use formatting and correct url structure to help search engines quickly glean and index content.

With an optimized on-page experience, your pay-per-click conversions should improve, too. Let’s go over some basics.

Effective SaaS Content Marketing and SEO

Content marketing is essential to online marketing efforts. Here are some tips for building strategies and creating content to fuel SaaS growth.

Design a content strategy with high-quality content conforming to Google’s EEAT framework.
Content creation should include blog posts, guides, webinars, and a case study of your ideal client’s success. Produce an “ultimate guide” of informative content addressing your target audience’s common questions. Be intentional about link building and internal links.
Optimize content for users and search engines: Use relevant keywords naturally throughout your content in meta tags, title tags, and meta descriptions. Ensure content is well-structured and easy to read. Avoid keyword stuffing.

Promote content across channels: Besides internal linking, share your content on social media, guest blog on industry websites, share case studies, and utilize email marketing to reach a wider audience.

What is PPC?

PPC is a digital advertising model that drives paid website traffic. Instead of free organic traffic, advertisers pay a fee each time someone clicks one of their ads. PPC strategies are evolving to leverage AI’s ability to analyze large data sets for precise targeting and bid management.

AI and PPC Marketing – Good and Bad News

AI makes some things harder even as it helps with other tasks. Keyword strategies are what fuel PPC marketing. The bad news is that AI is fueling more keyword competition, which drives costs. The good news is that all marketers can access new tools to help improve targeting, ad copy, and ad campaign efficiency.

PPC Strategies: Keyword Ideas for Targeting High-Intent Buyers

Different keywords map the buyer persona’s different awareness stages in the marketing funnel. Organizing content topics and long-tail keywords around search intent is a simple way to organize your approach.

Source: Penheel Marketing

Using Google Ads for High-Buying Intent Terms

By carefully selecting keywords and terms that prospective customers use when they’re ready to buy, a SaaS company or SEO agency can position your ads to capture this valuable audience.

Generally, it’s more cost-effective to run paid ads in the transactional phase of awareness when the prospect is highly intent to purchase. Use high-intent seed keywords within keyword phrases to attract users ready to pull out their credit cards. Examples include words such as buy, price, deals, and shipping.

Focusing on targeting and personalization is critical if your goal is to maximize ROI with targeted PPC campaigns. If you’re thinking that this can get complicated, you are right. Funnel Envy can help.

SaaS SEO and PPC Best Practices in 2024

On-page SEO and PPC can increase website traffic, but each has different strengths. SEO primes long-term growth, and PPC provides an immediate impact.

The magic balance? Combine them both! Use PPC data for SEO targeting, optimize both channels’ landing pages, and leverage PPC boosts for new content.

Here are the best practices to use as a PPC and SaaS SEO guide in 2024. These suggestions are prioritized from most important to least important. Every business differs, so you should adjust based on your marketing and customer acquisition goals.

Align goals: Ensure both efforts support shared objectives and use data from each to inform the other.
Optimize for user intent: Conduct thorough keyword research and create content for targeted landing pages.
Prioritize mobile experience: Design and optimize for mobile users and address technical SEO issues.
Focus on quality content: Create engaging SEO content and compelling ad copy for PPC. Make sure your blog includes high-quality backlinks.
Utilize data and analytics: Track performance with tools like Google Analytics. Conduct A/B tests and iterate strategies.

Landing Pages

On-page SEO and PPC for SaaS landing pages deserve special mention. At the landing page level, develop targeted landing pages for each PPC campaign and SEO keyword cluster to match the specific user intent behind the search query.

Focus on a clear value proposition and concise copy highlighting the benefits of your SaaS solution and addressing user pain points. Finally, optimize for conversions with an intuitive user experience, clear calls to action, and fast page load times.

On-page SEO and PPC Strategies: Drive Qualified Traffic

With best practices guiding your overall plan, here are some specific strategies.

Keyword Strategy, Research, and Targeting

Organize target keywords by intent and customer journey. Use a broad keyword list to cover general industry searches, niche keywords to target specific stages, and branded keywords to capture users already aware of your brand.

Analyze competitor’s SEO and PPC for keyword ranking factors. Identify high-performing keywords and leverage them in your campaigns while finding gaps and targeting underserved niches.

Research seasonal and trending topics. Tailor your keyword usage to current industry trends and seasonal events to capture timely traffic.

Leveraging PPC for Qualified Traffic

All traffic is not created equal. Besides converting sales, another benefit of PPC is it can help you qualify your website traffic. Here are some ideas:

Smart bidding strategies: Utilize automated bidding options like target CPA or ROAS to optimize ad spend and focus on conversions.
Retargeting campaigns: Target website visitors who haven’t converted yet with relevant ads reminding them of your product.
Dynamic search ads: Automatically generate ads based on your website content, ensuring relevance to user searches.
Experiment with different ad formats: Test video, image, and carousel ads to see what resonates best with your target audience.
Track and analyze data: Regularly monitor the performance of your SEO and PPC campaigns, using insights to adjust strategies and optimize for better results.

Remember that building a successful SaaS SEO and PPC strategy is ongoing. Experiment, test, and refine your approach based on data to attract qualified traffic and convert visitors into paying customers.

Moving Ahead with On-Page SEO and PPC

Anyone in the business can tell you digital marketing wasn’t easy even before AI. While AI tools are opening up significant advantages, they are also introducing new challenges, not to mention a considerable learning curve.

If you are wondering where to start with on-page SEO and PPC to boost your SaaS website traffic, Funnel Envy can help. We have used AI tools before the ChatGTP era and are experts in new integration and possibilities. You don’t have to do this alone. Reach out today to get started.

By Kala P|2024-01-25T04:52:10-08:00February 5th, 2024|Paid Media|0 Comments

Beyond SEO: Why Generating Traffic Isn’t Enough

Search engine optimization is a widely-promoted marketing discipline in part because of how impressive it looks to generate traffic increases. For marketing sites that rack up four or even five figures in unique views per month, it can be easy to get caught up in those numbers and focus on meeting certain milestones or a specific month-over-month growth rate.

The problem with having such a strong emphasis on traffic and visitors is it ignores the part of your customer journey that’s equally (if not more) important: converting all those visitors into paying clients. As impressive as it may seem when SEO helps increase monthly views by 50% or allows a page to rack up thousands of additional visits, traffic generation is meaningless unless it leads to a positive increase in revenue.

Understanding Visitor Intent

Ignoring those who accidentally visit your site, are just researching, or have no intention of buying your product or services, every person who lands on your page is at a particular step in their purchasing process. Their current place in the process will govern their intent.

According to McKinsey, there are six specific customer journeys that B2B marketers should be most concerned with: identifying products or services that meet a need, selecting a supplier for an initial purchase, co-developing products with a supplier, dealing with an unexpected event, using and servicing a product, and reordering familiar products or services.

You can break down these individual journeys into sub-steps that take a prospect from start to finish. As you evaluate elements of your website and marketing campaigns, remember to view them through the scope of these steps.

For example, the first part of identifying products or services that meet a need is knowing what’s out there. A B2B company can ensure its brand is identified during this step in several ways, from in-person promotion to search engine optimization based on relevant keywords. The specific methods you use to meet prospects at this point in the journey aren’t as important as addressing the consumer where they are without attempting to push them along the journey faster. Make sure to map your marketing efforts to these steps to maximize results.

Consider Your Conversion Rate

Besides the amount of traffic you generate, you’ll want to consider your conversion rate. While conversion rate is impacted by traffic generation, it’s a separate metric that helps you understand both your marketing efficiency and the quality of your traffic.

HubSpot provides a simple explanation for calculating conversion rate: divide the number of conversions by the total number of visitors, then multiply by 100 for a percentage. If you receive 500 visitors and 25 of them convert, you have a 5% conversion rate.

While conversion rate is impacted by traffic generation, it’s a separate metric that helps you understand both your marketing efficiency and the quality of your traffic. Click To Tweet

How do you go about improving your conversion rate? It varies greatly depending on what you’re selling, but there are a few general places you can start:

Blog. Posts on your site should be informative and well-written. If your blog is a thinly-veiled digital sales pamphlet for your products or services, prospects will catch on quickly and stop reading your posts for objective information and advice.
Forms and buttons. Experiment with different colors, fonts, sizes, etc., until you find one that works best to encourage visitors.
Social proof. This category is broad, so you may want to test several different elements. Consider testimonials, client interviews, security badges, and other indicators that you are a trustworthy vendor.
Facilitating communication. One critical element of marketing for B2B purchasers is a way to get in touch with an actual person from the vendors they’re considering. If the form you’re optimizing is designed for this purpose, remember to let users know they’ll be able to schedule a call or meeting with a real person.

Again, these are a few recommendations based on the general principles of B2B marketing. You should adapt and apply them in a way that makes sense for your specific brand and the audience for which you’ve designed it.

Segment Your Site Effectively

Once you’ve spent some time analyzing visitor intent, you can start to work on addressing the top needs of the most relevant traffic that visits your website.

In a B2B purchasing context, one of the things prospects will seek most is education. This is particularly true for newer clients who may not have been through several purchasing cycles like industry veterans. One of the most common ways companies provide relevant education to prospects is through consistent blog updates, where they can share news and developments that matter to buyers. This can also be accomplished through a longer-form medium, like reports, white papers, ebooks, etc.

Product demos and tests are other considerations – especially for software companies. Before committing a significant amount of their budget to a tool or application, buyers will want to see what it looks like while in use – possibly even use it themselves.

The desire for a test run in the world of SaaS startups facilitated the creation of the “freemium” pricing model. Users are given free access to a limited version of the tool or product, eventually encouraging them to move to a paid plan. B2B freemium models are typically more complex and dynamic – they might involve multiple meetings or presentations and test runs.

For best results, treat these segments like any other conversion element on your website and consistently work on optimizing them. Do prospects seem more receptive to learning from short-form blog posts on your site or longer white papers emailed to them directly? When people accessing your page are looking to connect with someone, is it better to list the phone number or create a pop-in window that allows users to click to schedule a call?

These are the kinds of questions you need to ask constantly instead of solely focusing on attracting traffic that may or may not be interested in your offering.

Final Thoughts on Traffic vs. Conversions

Nothing written here is intended to minimize the importance of generating traffic for successful B2B marketing optimization. Without visitors on your site, you’ll struggle to meet your marketing and sales targets, even if you have a finely-tuned digital experience that helps your prospects deal with all their relevant issues and concerns.

Focusing on traffic and SEO only becomes a problem when it takes away from other crucial parts of your marketing plan. Ignoring everything that happens after someone lands on your site will decrease your conversion rate in the long run. Even if you generate more traffic with this approach, it’ll likely be little more than a vanity metric if your site doesn’t help visitors meet their goals.

As a provider of services or products for other businesses, failing to improve your conversion rate by optimizing your on-site experience can lead to severe problems meeting growth and revenue targets. If you’re looking for help from a team of conversion rate optimization specialists with experience making funnels more efficient and improving marketing efforts, fill out this brief questionnaire so we can learn more about how best to serve your needs.

By Raj C|2022-03-22T12:59:15-07:00April 4th, 2022|Conversion Rate Optimization|0 Comments

What Matt Cutts’ Revelation on Social Media Means for CRO

Google’s Matt Cutts is making headlines again, with the release of a new video that challenges some common assumptions about the role of social media in search optimization. Responding a reader question, Cutts addresses a common perception: that social media signals (e.g. number of followers, likes or retweets) play an important role in the SEO process. Yet it turns out that this assumption is completely false. Google’s algorithm currently doesn’t have any factors in it that relate to signals from sites like Facebook or Twitter. This has major potential ramifications for how you think about the relationship between social media, SEO and CRO.

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By Arun Sivashankaran|2014-04-21T14:52:06-07:00March 7th, 2014|Digital Marketing|3 Comments

23 Tools to Optimize WordPress for Search & Conversions

WordPress has revolutionized the way bloggers and businesses create websites, publish content, and build a cohesive online presence. Because this platform makes it so much faster, easier, and cheaper to put up a website, there are a lot more blogs and websites for you to compete with these days. That’s why it’s vital for you to optimize your site as much as possible, so you can increase conversion rates and boost traffic.

Use these tools and resources to optimize your WordPress website for more conversions and traffic so you can leave the competition in the dust.

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By Arun Sivashankaran|2014-04-21T14:59:39-07:00November 20th, 2013|Digital Marketing|0 Comments

How to Practice (Google) Safe A/B Testing

Is A/B Testing allowed by Google?

Am I going to get penalized in search results?

These questions seem to come up often, so I thought I’d sum up the latest information, both from Google’s own blog and the Internet’s collective wisdom.

The short answer to this question is yes, A/B Testing is perfectly acceptably by Google, as long as you keep a few things in mind.

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By Arun Sivashankaran|2014-04-21T15:01:10-07:00October 24th, 2013|Testing|0 Comments

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