Category: SEO

If content is king, search engine optimization (SEO) is the key to getting your content seen by the right audience. Marketers are constantly exploring new ways to enhance their SEO strategies, the latest and most explosive trend being the use of AI-generated content. But what do the top SEO experts think about this trend?

In this article, we dive into the opinions of five top SEO experts on the use of the AI tool GPT-3. Let’s get started!

What is GPT-3?

GPT-3 stands for generative pre-trained transformer 3. It is an artificial intelligence language learning model developed by the Silicon Valley wunderkind OpenAI. With over 175 billion parameters, GPT-3 is considered one of the most advanced language models to date. It uses ‘deep learning’ (a machine learning technique) to create human-like text, write poetry and movie scripts, chat, translate, and perhaps the most fascinating of all – answer abstract questions!

Predictably, GPT-3 has generated tremendous buzz in the tech industry for its ability to produce high-quality, coherent text. Many developers and companies are exploring how GPT-3 can be integrated into various applications, including chatbots and content creation tools.

But is the buzz all hoopla or is there credibility behind its use for SEO. I looked to five leading thought leaders in the space for insights.

Related: GPT-4 launch

What 5 SEO Experts Think About AI-generated Content

SEO experts have varying opinions about AI-generated content in general, and GPT-3 in particular. Those who view it favorably believe AI-generated content can save businesses time and resources and be a valuable supplement to human-written content. 

Those who disagree with this view argue that AI-generated content lacks both originality and creativity, because of which it can never be as unique or engaging as human-developed content.

Let’s take a closer look at what five top SEO experts have to say on the matter.

Lily Ray

Senior Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research at Amsive Digital

Lily Ray raises significant concerns about the quality of AI-generated content. “There are shortcomings with ChatGPT and all AI content generation tools in their current form,” she says. 

Content-generation tools such as ChatGPT have been known to return wildly incorrect information and biased opinions. While the technology allows users to create content quickly and cost-effectively, the output generated often lacks expert-level or unique insights. This is not in line with Google’s emphasis on E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness), which is why she believes AI-generated content can negatively impact search engine rankings.

However, Lily does advocate for the use of AI in specific situations, such as creating summaries of your content or generating product descriptions. 

Matt Diggity

SEO entrepreneur

Matt Diggity has a largely positive view about using AI for generating content. He is pumped about how tools like ChatGPT can be used to write large volumes of content and conduct keyword research quickly and easily. “Even if AI isn’t your jam, your competitors are using it, so you should know what you’re up against,” he cautions. 

However, he does think it necessary to recheck all AI-generated content for grammatical and factual accuracy and proofread it before uploading. 

Gael Breton

Co-Founder, Authority Hacker

Gael Breton has somewhat of a balanced, if not neutral sentiment toward AI-generated content. However, he believes all web publishers have to deal with it in 2023, regardless of their personal views on the topic. 

Gael believes that most of the time, AI content is bland and can be identified accurately. However, it is possible to tweak the content to evade the tools that detect whether a particular piece of content is human-written or AI-generated. Moreover, Gael also explores how websites like CNET openly state that they are using AI engines to generate content that is then reviewed by humans.

Another interesting insight he shares is Google does not reduce organic traffic to a piece if you use more or less AI to help write it. According to Gael, “factors like keyword selection, competition, and other traditional SEO factors matter much more than the use of AI.”

Sam Oh

VP of Marketing, Ahrefs

Sam Oh explores the different use cases of ChatGPT for SEO and finds most of the ways people are using it will have negative results. However, he is bullish on AI for SEO, just not for writing blog posts.

He believes AI-driven keyword research is unreliable as its results have no search demand. “ChatGPT is insanely cool, but most of the use cases you’ve seen in Twitter or LinkedIn threads or YouTube videos are mostly hyped up for engagement bait,” he reveals. 

However, Sam thinks using ChatGPT to generate titles for blog posts is promising. According to him, the best use case of ChatGPT is creating outlines for your blog posts. This can help you organize your thoughts and get your creative juices flowing, helping you create better content.

Daniel Lofaso

Founder & CEO, Digital Elevator

Daniel Lofaso brings a reasoned judgment to the discussion, insisting that Google will do what Google has always done. He believes it will continue to reward content that is novel, written by subject matter experts (SMEs), and backed by references, examples, or unique takeaways. An article written by GPT-3 is no more than a simple regurgitating of what is already on the web, he says. It is often no different from what you’ll get by outsourcing it to a writer with no real subject matter expertise.

Daniel believes SEOs and content marketers need to step up their game and create systems and processes to make content valuable from an E-E-A-T point of view, conduct interviews with SMEs, and develop content with legitimate value to readers. “I do see the value in utilizing GPT-3 for SEO in many areas (the title of this blog was helpful with GPT-3), but the lazy use of having it rewrite what’s already out there is just not going to rank. Period,” he puts it. 

How is GPT-3 Used in SEO?

GPT-3 has widespread applications across the SEO domain. Whether they are effective or potentially harmful are still up for debate. However, the below are some of the primary applications of using AI-content that some SEOs testing.

They include:

1. Creating Content: You can use GPT-3 to generate content at scale. With its advanced natural language processing capabilities, GPT-3 generates engaging content for websites that can boost search engine rankings. Businesses in any sector can use the technology to create blog posts, meta descriptions, and other content for their web properties.
   • Pros: 
     • Content can be created at scale
     • Helps with writers block
     • Often is surprisingly well-formulated
   • Cons:
     • Content risks being the same as everyone else
     • GPT-3 doesn’t provide references
     • GPT-3 can often be highly inaccurate
2. Conducting Keyword Research: Apart from writing content, GPT-3 can also be used to identify and analyze relevant keywords and search terms for your company. This can help you optimize your content and rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
   • Pros:
     • Can get interesting, logically sound keywords
   • Cons:
     • The volume of these keywords is not provided 
3. Creating content calendars: GPT-3 is actually surprisingly good at putting together topically relevant content when prompted to do so. If you suffer from writers block, this can help plan the next sequence of blogs.
   • Pros:
     • The topics provided by GPT-3 are often great and sound interesting.
   • Cons:
     • Again, GPT-3 does not use keyword research so you’d want to layer in anything they propose with actual keyword research and targeting.

What’s the takeaway on AI-generated content?

The debate over AI-generated content is no doubt going to rage on for some time, particularly in the realm of SEO. The takeaway so far is that while AI offers the potential for increased efficiency, it also raises concerns about authenticity and quality, which are primary points of emphasis with Google.

Whether you are a marketer with decades of experience or an SEO newbie, there is but one consensus about AI-generated content so far – be open to change but always prioritize quality over quantity.

If the biggest SEO trend last year was optimizing for internal links, then this year, I’ve got to give the nod to refreshing old blog content.

Why? Because Google uses freshness within its ranking algorithm (section 18.0) and because yesterday’s underwear just plain stinks.

Check out this content refresh we did for a Digital Elevator to see how a content refresh helped the blog pageviews increase 533% just a couple months later!

We’ll dive into how to refresh content and give an example of exactly how to go about it.

Here are the steps to take to refresh your blogs for SEO:

1. Determine which content you want to refresh first
2. Use a keyword software to review current rankings
3. Use Google Search Console to find new content ideas
4. Review “People also ask” for content ideas
5. Utilize “Related searches” for additional sub-topics

As we explain above, we’ll use an existing blog on our site as an example, How to Find Non-Copyrighted Music for Your YouTube Videos, so you can see how to use these exact steps to get big gains with just a little leg work.

1. Determine which content you want to refresh first

There are several ways you can determine what content is underperforming and how to decide if it deserves a refresh.

• Use Google Analytics to review historical traffic data from the previous year. If it has been waning substantially, then it may deserve a refresh.
• Review keyword rankings history in a keyword software tool like Ahrefs or SEMRush or within Google Search Console. If keyword rankings are waning, it may be time for a refresh.
• Highlight blogs related to recurring events, current information queries, or product queries AND are more than a year old. For example, don’t you think a visitor would prefer a review post from the current year rather than one from previous years?

As a general rule of thumb, look for posts that are at least a year old (unless the data suggests otherwise).

For example, our post on how to find non-copyright music is over four years old, and in all likelihood, the resources inside the post are dated.

2. Use a keyword software to review current rankings

This is where you want to look at keyword rankings for opportunistic opportunities that might suggest content needs to be refreshed, where some low-hanging fruit exists, or where to get some more topic ideas.

For example, I will check out my non-copyrighted music blog in Ahrefs Organic keywords Site Explorer section.

That post ranks for 100s of keywords, and at first glance, many of them look to be synonym keywords of the primary keyword. 

I’ll then note the keywords that have the volume that I want to beef up my content.

If these keywords are not really helpful in helping me tackle this, I’ll want to actively look for more question-type content. To do this I filter my keywords with “what, how to, where” words to get better results. Make sure you use the “any” keyword filter here to get any keywords that include these terms.

Now that I have a much smaller list of keywords to sort through, I can review them to see if any are valuable to use to update my content. A few keywords that stand out to me from my initial search and my filtered search include the below:

• how to know if a song is copyrighted on youtube 100/monthly searches
• how to legally use copyrighted music on youtube 150/monthly searches
• popular songs that aren’t copyrighted 100/monthly searches

Because these are mostly question topics, a great way to include them in my blog refresh is to have a FAQ section with these exact questions and some answers. Google, and visitors, will love that.

3. Use Google Search Console to find new content ideas

Another way to do something similar to our keyword research tool (albeit with less filtering capabilities and actual keyword metric data) is to use Google Search Console.

After logging into your site portal, you’ll want to:

1. Click on “Search results” under Performance on the left sidebar
2. Click “New” and then “Page” in the dropdown
3. Enter your URL and confirm the filter is set
4. Click on the “Average position” box as well

Now that we have our Search Console filter set to the specific page we want to review, we need to filter it down a bit more.

Slightly down on the page, click the filter button on the far right and click “Position.”

Next, sort down a little farther so that you can select “Smaller than” and set the Position to 20 to see rankings positions below 20. Make sure to click “Done” when finished to initiate the sort.

Now you’ll see queries that are low-hanging fruit in the sense that they are on page one or two in the SERPs.

You can now look at these keywords to see if any specific topics deserve a section on the site.

The sweet spot here is really keywords ranked 10-20 that don’t have a specific mention in your existing blog. For example, the keywords “non copyrighted artists” looks like a good topic to include in my blog refresh.

4. Review “People also ask” for content ideas

For additional keyword ideas that you may not have in your blog post, type in your target keyword into Google and review the “People also ask” results. The more results you expand, the more questions Google will reveal to you.

These are some additional questions I may want to include in my FAQ section to address exactly what Google is telling me is related to my topic.

In this instance, I like the latter two questions.

Note: You may need to use variations of your target keyword here to get better results.

5. Utilize “Related searches” for additional sub-topics

Along with the People also ask section, you’ll also want to scroll to the bottom of the SERP results for even more topics.

None of these topics resonate with my blog topic that I haven’t already covered for my particular search, so I’ll dismiss them. For other topics, this can be a treasure trove of ideas, though.

Bonus Tips for Refreshing Blog Content

Here are some additional tips for maximizing your content refresh efforts.

Implement a last updated timestamp on your blogs. 

This timestamp tells Google and your visitors the last time your post was updated and sends important freshness and user experience queues. 

If you use WordPress, check out the WP Last Modified Info plugin.

Update your title tag to include the current year

Give Google and your viewers a nice signal that indicates your content is up to date. Just make sure to leave your URL as was.

Update your internal links

If you are actively blogging, it may behoove you to link to your freshly updated blog post from some of your new blog posts and vice versa. Spread some of the link juice around on your site with this tactic.

Over to You! Update Your Content

Updating your content with your new keyword research is a qualitative effort. If you have new topics to write, it should be fairly self-explanatory where they fit into your existing content. 

However, the best use of these keywords is as subsections with dedicated headings (H2s, H3s, etc.) or as part of a FAQ section. 

Updates to content need not be massive endeavors; sometimes all you need to refresh your content is a few new links or a new paragraph or two. Other times updates can be more substantial. Your data on keyword opportunities should spell this out for you, and if you make an effort to provide value to the reader in your updates, you’ll be enjoying traffic increases in no time. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjnQHp15vvY

If your company has a lack of SEO talent or your current team is struggling to keep up with all your SEO campaigns, it may be time to outsource your SEO to a third-party like an agency or specialist.

While I would argue that some tasks are best left for internal teams, SEO is just one of those areas where companies of all sizes can benefit from an advanced SEO specialist or a team of SEOs whose sole focus is to help you grow traffic and sales.

Today, we are going to review a few of the nuances you’ll want to consider when outsourcing your SEO, including:

• The 2 SEO Outsourcing Models 
• How to Approach SEO Outsourcing Based on Needs
• Where to Find Outsourced SEO Companies or Partners
• How Much SEO Outsourcing Costs

The 2 SEO Outsourcing Models 

There are two SEO outsourcing models you’ll have to consider depending on what stage your company is in or what your current in-house team looks like:

1. Outsource all SEO
2. Combine outsourced SEO with an in-house team

Outsource all SEO

If you don’t have the budget for an SEO specialist or team (I’ll get more into costs later), the obvious choice here is to outsource all of your SEO needs. When talking about SEO tasks, we are often talking about on and off-page SEO, content writing, and the often understated importance of development and graphic design. These are super cost-intensive to perform in-house and not all SEO agencies provide all of these services, so that is something to consider when hiring (which we will discuss later when we discuss outsourcing based on needs).

Combine outsourced SEO with an in-house team

If you do have some existing marketers who need overflow help or specialized help, then it makes sense to combine your in-house team with outsourced SEO. In my experience, the best cost-savings and performance come into play when you have an existing writing team and development team and leave the heavy lifting to SEO specialists (research, link building, site speed recommendations, content audits, etc).

How to Approach SEO Outsourcing Based on Needs

At Digital Elevator, we approach SEO based on a maximum business impact methodology. This means prioritizing your SEO efforts based on whatever your most important goals are for your company.

For example, if you want to be known for a particular service or product, coming up with SEO strategies that help you rank for that service or product as a priority. Or, if you want to know where your content gaps are and what content is the most impactful, you’d prioritize a content audit. 

Using that content audit example, perhaps you just want an SEO partner that specializes in SEO content audits.

If you don’t have such a specialized goal in mind and just want to increase sales, you should be able to lean on an SEO agency to help you strategize an action plan based on your goals and budget.

Whatever direction you go in, it is helpful to approach your SEO outsource partner with some specific goals, metrics, or KPIs they can back into.

Where to Find the Best Outsourced SEO Companies or Partners

Finding really good SEO outsourcing companies or partners may be the most difficult part of moving toward this marketing model.

These are the main ways you can find potential partners:

1. Google the specific SEO service or industry
2. Use a reputable directory site
3. Job boards
4. Utilize your network

Google the specific SEO service or industry

Similar to the example we covered above, looking for a “seo content audit service” and seeing companies, like Digital Elevator, who specialize in this type of service can be a good way to start some discussions and get an idea of deliverables and costs.

You can also do a search based on your industry, such as “SEO for Shopify agency” for eCommerce SEO or “seo agency for pharmaceutical industry.”

Use a reputable directory site

Clutch is probably the best directory site that helps you sift through some of the noise. You can filter SEO agencies by specific services, client budget, hourly rate, industry, reviews, and more.

I like Clutch because they generally require your clients to actually interview with them, helping to keep the quality of reviews a bit more transparent and credible.

Job boards

I’d only suggest job boards if you are trying to hire a freelance SEO. Note that with freelancers you can’t expect them to do everything really well. In other words, don’t expect an SEO freelancer to be an expert SEO, content writer, developer, and project manager. If they do all of that expect to pay a pretty penny or expect low-quality results.

That said, the best place to find SEOs on job board sites is probably Upwork. 

Other notable freelance SEO job board sites include Indeed.com and Fiverr although with Fiverr, you spend a lot of time sorting through profiles of SEO generalists and may find it is only a good option if you have basic SEO needs.

Utilize your network

If you have a robust professional network, see if any of your contacts can make some recommendations of SEO agencies or specialists in your industry. 

How Much SEO Outsourcing Costs

The costs of SEO outsourcing very much depend on the amount of work you need, the industry you are in, the competition, how quickly you need work done, the track record or reputation of your SEO partner, and the amount of project management time you want to invest.

If you are a small local business and you are looking for turn-key SEO services, expect to pay $1,000 to $2,000 for ongoing local SEO. If you are a regional business in a hyper-competitive market, expect to get your wallet out. I recently saw a very reputable personal injury SEO agency with project averages around $15,000 a month.

This plays into the reputation of your SEO partner as well. For companies that are really well-known for specific services or have worked with household brands, expect monthly SEO retainers in the $10k+ range, with one-off projects like site quality assessments coming in at similar rates.

In terms of project management, I have seen very successful business owners run separate teams of SEOs, developers, writers, and link builders from various regions and have total marketing costs come in at a third to a quarter cheaper than if they went all-in with one agency.

Comparing SEO Outsourcing to the Cost of Employees

One last thing I want to talk about is the cost of employees versus that of SEO outsourcing partners.

There are certainly pros to having in-house employees but I’d argue it is almost always better to have an outsourced SEO partner. 

For starters, the estimated total pay for an SEO specialist is $71,600 per year according to Glassdoor. That’s not all though, according to the SBA the actual cost of an employee is 1.25 to 1.4 times their salary when you account for taxes, insurance, healthcare, and retirement plans. So that same SEO could cost you $89,500 to $100,240 in actuality.

Then there is the likelihood that your SEO is not a writer, a graphic designer, a developer, and a project manager. What do you do about those roles should you actually have the budget to hire that initial SEO?

The point is, if we divide the cost of one seasoned SEO employee into 12-months, we are looking at $7,458 to $8,353 a month that could be used for an agency. With that sort of budget you can likely get the SEO specialist and writers, graphic designers, developers, and project managers who can all fall under one agency roof.

To me, it makes a strong case to partner with an agency of specialists at the end of the day.

https://youtu.be/uuYGMJ-lt4M

Using the exact backlink analysis I’m about to show you, you’ll be able to create a backlink strategy that gets you to the number one spot for your target keywords just like our clients:

Exclusively Hybrid and “toyota prius battery replacement”

And Fitness Mentors and “best personal trainer certification”

If you want to learn how many backlinks your competitors are using to outrank you and the link building factors you need to consider to outrank them, you’ll be happy to know that, with a little practice, you can execute this process in a few minutes.

All other things being equal — content quality, depth, and user experience — having more links than your competitors should help you to outrank them.

Here is the exact 7 step research process we use to determine the quantity of links you’ll need to take over the SERPs.

Before we begin, I want to emphasize that we focus on the competitor backlink analysis from a URL basis, as knowing how many links are needed to rank a specific URL is really what a competitor backlink analysis is all about. 

If you want me to do a video analyzing all the backlinks your competitors have for link prospecting, let me know in the comments.

Step 1: Identify primary keyword and volume

The primary keyword will provide the basis of your backlink analysis as it will showcase who ranks for your target keyword. It will also let you know the volume of this keyword and reveal how valuable it is to your SEO campaign and business goals. In short, it will help you triage your link building efforts based on competition and benefits.

For this example, let’s use a previously published post from Guitar.com on the best acoustic guitar amplifiers to buy, with a primary keyword of “best acoustic guitar amp.”

• How to: There are several ways to pull keyword volume but I’ll break down a free way and a way that uses premium software. The free way is to use Google Keyword Planner. Simply login, select “Get Search Volume and Forecasts,” and insert your keyword for data.

• Google Keyword Planner is good enough for many people, but it does have its flaws. Let’s use the example of “best acoustic guitar amp” to showcase why.

For example, the keyword volume here shows a really wide range — 1,000 to 10,000 per month — and an arbitrary Competition value of “High.”

Compare that to a premium keyword research tool like Ahrefs and you have much more granular data.

Using their Keyword Explorer tool and doing the same search we can see that Ahrefs provides data on Keyword difficulty, and in high contrast to Google Keyword Planner, says this search is easy to rank for. It also provides two volume estimates, one for my native country (USA) and one for Global volume. I find this data to be much more accurate, and telling, of how difficult it is to rank for a keyword based on my link building efforts.

Step 2: Note current rankings

your current ranking will provide an indication of how many more links you have to build, and gives you a benchmark for how the other factors in this process will influence your link building efforts. More on that later.

How to:

Noting current rankings is fairly straightforward. You can perform a search for your primary keyword in the SERPs and keep clicking until you see where you rank. If it’s a newly published blog, you might be clicking for a while.

An additional way is to use the Site Explorer feature in Ahrefs, using the Exact URL feature to review rankings.

Step 3: Note your site’s domain rating

The Domain Rating, or DR, of your website is defined by Ahrefs as “the strength of a website’s backlink profile compared to the others in our database on a 100-point scale.” In short, the higher a site’s DR, the more weight it carries and therefore the easier it is to rank. Why is this important? Well, if you are going after a keyword and trying to decide how many links you need to build and your research tells you that all the sites that rank for that keyword have high DRs, it might mean they inherently can rank without a lot of links while your site may not carry the same weight. Basically, a site with higher DR has more trust than a site that does not.   

How to:

To find a site’s DR, you can use the Site Explorer tool from Ahrefs, using the Overview option on the left sidebar. 

Step 4: Note your URLs Referring Domains

You’ll also want to know how many referring domains your site has as we’ll be comparing this metric to the top ranking sites.

How to:

Again using Site Explorer, mark the number of Referring domains you’ve earned. 

Step 5: Note lowest Referring Domains of top three competitors

If you want to earn any respectable amount of traffic from your keywords, you’ll want to strive for the top three positions in the SERPs. This does not dismiss the fact that you can earn a lot of long-tail traffic before you rank in the top three for your primary keyword, but since we are basing these link metrics on your competitors, you’ll want to know which of the top three competitors has the lowest number of referring domains.

How to:

Ahrefs makes it really easy to find this, and the next metric (Domain Rating) within their Keyword Explorer tool. After entering your keyword into the tool, scroll to the bottom of the page to get these metrics. 

Step 6: Note lowest Domain Rating of top three competitors

Just like it is important to know your own DR, it is important to know the DRs of your competitors.

How to:

We already have the data from an easily accessible area on the Keyword Explorer tool, so we’ll make a note of that.

Step 7: Note suggested Referring Domains from Ahrefs

You may have seen that this metric was already revealed when we referenced that Ahrefs said this keyword was “Easy” to rank for. Now you may be saying, “why did we go through all this trouble of pulling all this data when we could have just looked at this one metric to get an idea of how many links we need to build?” Good question. The fact is you need to dig a little deeper than this general metric using the other information we’ve pulled to determine how competitive a keyword really is to rank for.  

Interpret Backlink Analysis Data

Now that you have gone through the process of pulling all this data you should have a spreadsheet that looks like this. 

In our Guitar.com example, things to note for our second page ranking for “best acoustic guitar amp” are the following:

• Currently rank 11 for target keyword
• Domain rating of 69
• Referring domains 12
• Lowest Domain Rating of top three competitors 44
• Lowest amount of referring domains of top three competitors 8
• Suggested referring domains from Ahrefs 8

Upon analyzing this data alone, we can conclude that we should have enough links to be within the top three ranking positions. One of the top three spots have a smaller Domain Rating (44) and fewer referring domains (8) than Guitar.com and we have satisfied more backlinks than what Ahrefs is telling us are needed to rank in the top 10 (we have 12 to their recommended 8). 

So what do we do now? Quit SEO?

This is an important SEO lesson in that sometimes data alone will not tell the whole story. Rather than go through all the scenarios surrounding why the Guitar.com site might not rank better, I think I’ll chalk it up to their title tag “The best guitar amplifiers to buy in 2020: 10 best acoustic amps.” The top three results all reference 2021, the current year.

Perhaps updating the title to the current year (and even the gear reviews) would allow Guitar.com to take its rightful position near the top of the rankings. For now, they have a good understanding of how they stand from a competitive backlink standpoint and what to do for other posts they want to evaluate and so do you.

https://youtu.be/_G6hgqBQsYs

It can be said that without good SaaS keyword research, most software as a service companies aren’t likely to reach their full potential. Of all the fundamental areas to focus on and get right, keyword research is arguably one of the most important because it is the driver of organic traffic, awareness, and sales.

But what are the keyword research strategies a SaaS business should implement to achieve long-term success?

At Digital Elevator, we’ve been helping SaaS companies win at SEO for over a decade, and we are going to share some of our winning strategies with you today.

We’ll cover:

• The Types of SaaS Keyword Categories
• Keyword Research Around Sales Funnels
• Creating Product & Solution Pages Steeped in Keyword Research
• SaaS Competitor Keyword Analysis
• Perform Keyword Research Around These SaaS Page Types
• SaaS Keyword Research Key Takeaways

And some bonus information on some brands that are killing it in SaaS SEO. Ready?

The Types of SaaS Keyword Categories

Your SaaS keyword research should identify a very fundamental, yet very necessary categorization in order to capture search volume by user intent:

1. Commercial
2. Transactional
3. Informational
4. Navigational

Note that some types of searches can overlap in the above categories, which is why we stress creating content for each of the above categories. For example, someone may type in “Walmart” and want to find the nearest store or just want to navigate to the website to shop online.

Commercial keywords

Commercial keywords provide an indication of the intent to learn more about your SaaS products. As such, these can be very valuable keywords to research and optimize your site for because they are often the step right before the transactional search.

Commercial keywords support a query to learn more about a product and are indicative of a searcher who is likely to convert in the near future.

Examples of commercial keywords:

• Free project management software
• Project management software features
• Monday vs Basecamp
• Monday reviews

These keywords can be targeted with comparison articles, certain types of how-to articles, reviews, and best of posts.

Transactional keywords

Transactional keywords are keywords with the strongest intent to purchase your product. 

These searchers have more or less decided they want a product similar to yours and have their credit card in their hand ready to purchase.

Examples of transactional keywords:

• Project management software prices
• Buy project management software

Informational keywords

Informational keywords have little to no purchase intent and simply provide information.

These types of keywords win in search volume, but lose out in terms of helping with conversions.

Examples of informational keywords:

• What is project management?
• Who owns Basecamp?

Navigational keywords

Navigational keywords are simply keywords used when someone wants to get to a specific destination. 

Examples of navigational keywords

• Monday contact email
• Monday login

Often, SaaS companies don’t need to focus on building out pages for navigational searches, but should consider how they relate to user experience (UX). For example, a search for your software customer service page is likely, and should be easy to navigate to from a UX perspective although it is very likely Google can provide this information easily and with little SEO effort on your behalf.

SaaS Keyword Research Tools

Performing the actual keyword research can be done with your favorite keyword research tool, but the intent of these keywords is generally a manual process. Our team uses Ahrefs for keyword research, but also likes the SEMRush keyword research tool because it actually provides an intent metric for you.

While this tool can be very useful, I still recommend looking at the SERPs to make sure you are going after keyword intent properly. 

Take for example a search for “project management software.” 

This is one of those searches where you could argue intent for commercial (someone comparing PM softwares), informational (someone wanting to know the definition of project management software), or transactional (someone looking to purchase project management software).

So what does the searcher want?

Google tells us.

As we can see from the SERPs and the prominence of “best of” results, Google places the intent of this search in the commercial category. 

What this exercise tells us is that if you want to rank for that search term your best bet is to create a best of post so that you are creating content that matches what Google is looking for in terms of how they interpret intent.

Keyword Research for All Stages of the SaaS Sales Funnel

We’ve clearly identified four types of intent behind keywords for our SaaS, now it’s time to consider how these work in our SaaS sales funnel and how that relates to keyword research.

When researching SaaS keywords, we want to make sure our content team is provided with the relevant topics to cover, the sub-topics which also have keyword volume, and how they can create content for all stages of the funnel.

Why is this important?

Creating content for the top, middle, and bottom of the sales funnel will allow you to attract, convert and move prospects along your sales funnel no matter what stage they enter. 

If we consider top of the funnel more of a brand awareness stage, middle of the funnel a consideration stage, and bottom of the funnel the final research stage, we are covering all of our bases and giving our SaaS products the best chance to continually drive leads, demos, trials, or signups.

Let’s use the company Unbounce as an example to see how they cover the different types of keywords for different stages of their sales funnel.

SaaS Top of the Funnel Keywords

As mentioned, top of the funnel keywords and the topics that are centered around them have a lot to do with brand awareness. 

They are related to brand awareness because these topics generally have a lot of search volume. Because they are not commercial or transactional in nature, they can be considered top of the funnel in terms of building trust with a prospect who finds your content and learns about your brand for the first time.

Using Unbounce as an example, some good examples of top of the funnel keywords they are ranking for are:

• What is a landing page (16,000 searches a month)
• Landing page design (1,300 searches a month)
• Landing page best practices (450 searches a month)

The above searches have nothing to do with Unbounce itself, are not related to making a purchase or comparing software, and these users are very unlikely to make a purchase when landing on the Unbounce site.

The value of these keywords, however, is that they speak to the exact type of audience that Unbounce wants to attract – someone who wants to know what landing pages are for, how to design a landing page, or the best practices for using landing pages in their marketing.

More often than not, SaaS brands who rank for top of the funnel content will use blogs to rank for these types of searches. 

While a reverse engineering of nearly any popular SaaS will reveal top of the funnel content as the top traffic-generating source, this does not mean that this should be the sole focus of your efforts. 

As mentioned, traffic from top of the funnel content tends to be the highest in volume, but the lowest in conversions. 

But as a SaaS in any competitive space understands, top of the funnel content can give you a seat at the table when the prospects begin to move down the funnel, because at least they will begin to associate your brand with the Products you provide. 

SaaS Middle of the Funnel Keywords

Middle of the funnel content for a SaaS can prove to be some of its most important in terms of the sales funnel. These searchers are aware that there are software solutions for the problems that they have, but they haven’t really begun to narrow down their searches to any specific brands and may still be a few days, weeks or even months out from doing so.

For Unbounce, middle of the funnel keywords they rank for include:

• Landing page builder (1,600 searches a month)
• Landing page template (450 searches a month)
• Real estate landing pages (200 searches a month)

These searches are much closer to our commercial keyword category we previously identified, and where the searchers are discovering the different types of options they have should they want to purchase a software that meets their needs.

You’ll often find that product or solution pages rank for these types of terms (more on that below), and that an understanding of your users’ needs will best position you to craft content to rank for many different types of middle of the funnel keywords.

SaaS Bottom of the Funnel Keywords

Bottom of the funnel keywords for SaaS companies are related to interest, desire, and action. 

These people know there are solutions out there that meet their needs and they are narrowing down their decision before they inevitably make a purchase. They already know who you are, and will be making transactional searches to inform their final decision.

For Unbounce, this means keywords such as:

• Unbounce landing page templates (100 searches a month) 
• Unbounce free trial (50 searches a month) 
• Unbounce ab testing (40 searches a month)

This may be your final chance to convince your prospects why your product is the best fit for them or has the most features for the money.

Bottom of the funnel content can take the form of several different types of content. For example, Unbounce has case studies that may help push users over the edge.

They also have free whitepapers that have content geared at using their product for some end result, rather than just for lead generation.

Other brands use webinars, reviews pages, or product update pages for extra value adds based on the perceived needs of their buyers.

So, if you were to ask me ‘Daniel, where should I start with this keyword research?” I would say with your money-making pages, which should be foundational in any SaaS website design and keyword research strategy. These are your product and solution pages.

Creating Products & Solutions Pages Steeped in Keyword Research

Keyword research doesn’t need to drive your product and solutions pages, but it can.

What I mean by that can be best explained by example.

Take the Unbounce.com site for example, starting with a look at the dropdown menu under Products.

Let’s dissect the “Templates” as well as the “Popups & Sticky Bars” pages in terms of keyword rankings for some examples.

We can tell by looking at the title tag and heading of the landing page templates page that they have clearly optimized the page for “landing page templates.” 

Title tag: 100+ High-Converting Landing Page Templates | Unbounce

Heading (H1): Choose From Over 100 High-Converting Landing Page Templates

In the rankings of this page above (with branded searches removed), we can see that the page does very well for queries related to landing page templates and in fact, ranks #1 for this very competitive search.

There is also a dedicated page for Popups and Sticky Bars, which Unbounce does not dominate as well as for keywords as their landing page template page, but shows a concerted effort to do so based on the keyword targeting.

Like the landing page template title tag, we see the use of the target keyword here as well: Popup Builder | Sticky Bar Builder | Unbounce. But, we don’t see it used in the heading: Convert Better on Any Page of Your Website.

However, we can see some rankings for this page, albeit probably not aligned with what Unbounce would like to see.

Regardless, the point here is that there are separate Product pages for each of their respective products, and it seems that Unbounce has taken the time to optimize these pages based on the target keywords they have researched.

In a different example, this time on the Solutions page, we can see Unbounce has also potentially used keyword research to drive their solutions pages, or perhaps they just wanted to create a page that resonated with their users. If you can do both, that is the best of both worlds, and why we try to recommend it to our clients when we create the Solutions pages for them.

Back to the example for Unbounce’s Solution page for the Email Marketing use case.

This page, in addition to being a value add for potential visitors who may want to know if this Solution works for email marketing, also has some SEO value.

As we can see above, “email marketing landing pages” and related searches have volume. 

Bonus tip: We can see potential keyword value in the market by looking at the “CPC” metric, or cost per click. As seen above, “landing page email marketing” has a CPC of $42.33, showing high transactional value and something worthy of ranking for organically. 

Related: SaaS PPC Tips for TOF, MOF, BOF (Sales Funnels) 

SaaS Competitor Keyword Analysis

Keyword research around Products and Solutions is a very personal and subjective type of research as it relates exclusively to your Products and Services.

However, it is very likely that you have several competitors who have similar Products that will be competing for the same keywords. 

So while you may only do a little of competitor research when doing keyword research for the Products related to your SaaS, you’ll definitely want to reverse engineer your competitors best-performing keywords to get an understanding of where they are driving traffic (and potentially leads) for all of their types of content.

This type of research is called a keyword content gap analysis and can be done with a tool like Ahrefs.

Using the Ahrefs Content Gap tool we can gain insight into the keywords our competitors rank for, and then make decisions on whether we want to create content to compete with these rankings.

You may already know who your competitors are or, if not, can perform a quick search around a target solution to see who ranks and enter them into the tool.

Let’s continue with Unbounce and look for “landing page software.”

On the first page of the SERPs we see brands Leadpages, Instapage, and some roundup posts that mention brands like ClickFunnels, and Wishpond.

Let’s throw those in our tool:

Off that bat, one of the keywords I see a competitor ranking for is “what is amp?” This keyword alone ranks for 11,000 searches per month. There are also some other keywords that may lend themselves to landing page creation or some sort of problem where a landing page may be part of the solution. 

These include: remarketing; funnels; cross selling

Naturally, you’d want to do a bit more research to determine the intent of these searches in the SERPs, how competitive they are, how much value they would have for your brand, and if your software solution makes logical sense in relation to the topic.

The above is just a small example of the additional 6,686 keywords that unbounce.com does not rank for. They could theoretically continue the above process over and over and review each topic to determine viability.

Another option to look at competitor keywords is to reverse engineer competitors’ sites on a case-by-case basis.

Let’s take Instapage.com since it seems to be ranking for a lot of keywords Unbounce does not. 

Put the site in the Ahrefs Site Explorer tool and check out the Top pages.

Now we can sort through the top pages of Instapage.com to see the keywords they rank for along with other data such as volume of primary keyword, the estimated amount of traffic, the amount of keywords the page ranks for in total, and the value if you were to pay for the keywords in Google Ads.

Another way to look into competitor keyword research is to use a different tool inside Ahrefs. On the same sidebar of the Site Explored is a section called “Top pages” under the “Legacy” section.

This is my personal favorite way to reverse engineer competitors because it allows you to expand on ALL the keywords a URL ranks for without leaving the page. Here, you’ll see the same URLs as the above Top pages data, except with a Keywords dropdown that you can expand.

I personally like this view better because it gives me an idea of the volume of some of the secondary keywords and their potential. At Digital Elevator, we don’t select keywords in isolation, we select topics and research the possibility of ranking for 100s or even 1,000s of keywords for one page. 

As you can see in the above screenshot, this AMP post from Instapage.com ranks for over 550 keywords. While the primary keyword of “what is amp” at 11,000 searches per month is very desirable, the other 553 keywords are attractive as well.

Anyhow, from a quick glance you can see that there are multiple types of keywords (and content types) that you can glean from a competitive analysis. From here it is up to the SEO team to determine which pages will have the most business impact and evaluate other SEO factors such as keyword difficulty, backlinks, content depth and quality, and other important factors that may influence rankings.

Perform Keyword Research Around These SaaS Page Types

It is likely that the majority of your SaaS keyword research will reveal keywords that are good for your Product and Solutions pages as well as your blog. However, your keyword research shouldn’t stop there, and trying to be intentional about the content you create around keywords can provide your site that extra push it needs to generate more attention.

Here are the areas you should focus on:

Product pages

These are the money-making pages that serve the bottom of the funnel searchers who are exploring all the things your software can do. This is your page to brag about yourself and infuse potential keywords into the mix that match search intent with purchase intent.

These keywords have commercial or transactional intent and should include keywords such as: software; tool; platform; solution; etc.

Solution pages

Solution pages generally serve a more specific audience and are popular for helping searches understand and answer “is this software for me?” 

For example, Qualtics has an entire Solutions section dedicated to Industries and Roles.

The Qualtrics Education solution page ranks for “qualtrics for students” which has 40 searches a month as well as “educational survey” which also has 40 searches a month. In this capacity, the page serves for both branded and generic searches.

Features pages

Features are often subsets of the actual SaaS Solution, but help explain important ways the software works to aid in the site’s UX. When possible, it is recommended that these pages also be created with keyword research in mind.

For example, Keap’s Feature page on their CRM ranks for a slew of commercial and middle of the funnel keywords:

Integrations page(s)

The integration capabilities of a SaaS are often a major consideration for consumers when finalizing their options. In addition to creating a standalone integration page, it is also advantageous to do keyword research on your integration partners’ keywords.

For example, leadpages.com has searches dedicated to the types of integrations they support:

Pricing pages

Pricing pages generally serve branded searches and should be fairly straightforward to rank for. However, pricing page keyword research may reveal some untapped FAQ opportunities in which to ensure the traffic goes to your site versus a competitor or roundup post.

For example, the term “CRM price” gets 450 searches a month and may make for a keyword worth targeting on a CRM pricing page.

Versus pages

Versus pages are a common SaaS tactic that can be prioritized in terms of business value. 

These are often funneled with direct branded search comparisons. For example, Clearbit has gone directly after their competitor data.com with this page:

Based on some of the related searches, it looks like a win:

Reviews pages

Another bottom of the funnel search is “[brand] review.” Rather than losing clicks to software review sites like G2 or Capterra try to earn some of this traffic with a review page of your own.

Case studies

I’ve come across generic “[industry] case study” or “[industry] success stories” keywords with volume. For example, check out these keywords from Keap’s case study page:

SaaS Keyword Research Key Takeaways

• Understand keyword intent when optimizing pages for intent
• Product and Solution pages should be focused on commercial and transactional intent, even though that likely means less volume for their keywords
• Perform keyword research around top, middle, and bottom of the funnel keywords
• If possible, every page on your site should be steeped in keyword research
• Remember to look at the SERPs to determine intent and then decide what types of content you need to create to compete
• Do a competitor keyword gap analysis to drum up quick keyword research ideas
• Consider business impact, keyword difficulty, and content quality before investing in specific keyword rankings
• Consider all the types of pages you can do keyword research around

Keyword research is just one piece of the puzzle for SaaS SEO. When conducting your research, don’t put all the weight on keyword volume. Consider the journey of the user, how to create content around each stage of their research, and how your research can combine with business initiatives to stay focused on the areas where you can get quick wins.

As always, if you need help with your SaaS keyword research, content marketing, or SEO, feel free to contact Digital Elevator to discuss your goals.