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.
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:
Commercial
Transactional
Informational
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.
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.
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.
This is a tried and true guide to SaaS SEO for companies looking to increase their traffic, rankings, and ultimately, sales.
We’ve used this exact strategy to help countless SaaS companies get 100s of thousands of visits from SEO.
So tune in, buckle up, and enjoy the ride.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Ensure Issue-free Technical SEO with an SEO Site Audit
Perform Keyword Research for the Top, Middle, and Bottom of the Sales Funnel
Perform an SEO Competitor Analysis to Understand the SEO Landscape
Write SEO-optimized Product, Solution, and Blog Content
Use “The Skyscraper Technique” for Content Marketing and Link Building Prowess
Ensure Issue-free Technical SEO with an SEO Site Audit
The first thing you want to do to ensure you have a strong SEO foundation for the rest of your efforts is to address any technical issues your site might have.
SEO technical audits are relatively straightforward, but your site may not rank to its full potential without addressing technical SEO issues even if you do all the other things on this list right.
The good news is that you can find any technical SEO issues your SaaS site might have with existing, free tools: Google Search Console.
After logging in, go to the Coverage area of the site to see what types of technical SEO issues your site may have.
The “Error” section shows how many pages can’t be indexed by Google. If your site looks like this one with zero issues, you are in pretty good shape.
However, I can see that 240 “Excluded” pages were intentionally not indexed. This is probably a non-issue, but I’ll want to check them out to see if I do want these pages to appear in Google.
After drilling down a little further into some of the non-indexed examples, I can get more details and decide whether or not these should be left alone or included in the index.
Any issues I see in the Coverare report should be addressed to make sure my site’s health is as good as possible.
According to the Ahrefs site the tool will help to check for issues related to:
A tool like this is great because it allows you to run automated reports, but the Google Search Console tool is highly effective as well.
Note that technical SEO increases in importance the more traffic your site receives. For new sites it may not hold as much weight, but for higher traffic sites it can be really detrimental to your success.
Now that we’ve performed an SEO technical audit of our SaaS site we can move to the next step.
Perform Keyword Research for Top, Middle, and Bottom of the Sales Funnel
Now it’s time for the fun stuff: keyword research.
The purpose of this type of keyword research for a SaaS website is to drive traffic for searchers who have varying levels of intent.
This is important because you want to attract people to your SaaS at all stages of their research and interest in products like yours.
We have a very in-depth post on SaaS keyword research that you should check out, and I also encourage you to buckle up for this extremely informative video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G6hgqBQsYs
Let’s take a look at some of the top keyword rankings of Unbounce, a popular landing page software, to see some of the differences between each stage of the sales funnel.
Here, we can see that most of the top keywords are top of the funnel and informational:
What is a landing page
Landing page design
We also see some middle of the funnel keywords related to commercial intent:
Landing page builder
Landing page template
For a bottom of the funnel and decision making search, check out this branded search:
Unbounce ab testing
Here are some takeaways for SaaS keyword research that you can learn from the above:
Top of the funnel keywords generally have the most search volume yet have the least amount of intent for a transaction.
Ex. “What is a landing page” has 5,500 searches per month but this searcher is unlikely to be looking for landing page software at this point.
Middle of the funnel keywords have modest search volume and cater to the searcher who is discovering that there are software solutions out there that can be used.
Ex. “Landing page builder” has 1,600 searches per month but shows a high commercial intent of someone who is exploring different kinds of landing page building software.
Bottom of the funnel keywords are highly transactional in intent although they generally have very low keyword volume. These searches are often, but not always, branded.
Ex. “Unbounce ab testing” has only 40 searches per month but shows the intent of someone who is familiar with the software’s capabilities and digging in to learn more before making a purchasing decision.
Now that you understand the different types of SaaS keyword research you need to do I’ll show you an awesome shortcut to your research, starting with your competitors.
Perform a SEO Competitor Analysis to Understand the SEO Landscape
In SaaS SEO just like any SEO, the challenge behind top rankings is always about the competition.
So, before you begin creating any content and dedicating a bunch of time to it, you should see what the competition is up to.
You’ll want to perform competitor keyword research around the same areas you intend on creating content.
I’d recommend doing this around product, solution, and blog pages to start.
Start with a simple Google search of one main solution your software provides, such as “landing page software” in the case of our Unbounce example.
With this search we can see a “best of” roundup post in the top spot, a People also ask section, our site, and a top competitor, Leadpages.
Let’s use the competitor found in the roundup post, Instapage, as an example to see how they compare to Unbounce.
You’ll need a keyword ranking software for this type of reverse engineering. We’ll use Ahrefs for this example, specifically their Ahrefs Site Explorer tool and the Top pages filter:
We can sort through Instapage to gain valuable insight into what they are targeting, what they are ranking for, and more relevant information.
As you can see by looking at the URLs, most of the top pages on this site are blogs. This is consistent with our comment on top of funnel content having the most volume, and since this data is filtered based on traffic, it makes sense.
When finding this type of data, make a note of all the types of content that are relevant to your SaaS as topics to cover. Since the majority of this content is blog content, you should have a bunch of top of the funnel content you can create.
But what about product and solutions pages?
Since these types of keywords have less volume, they are buried a bit more in our keyword research tools. However, there is a shortcut to take that involves using the website folder structure of the products or solutions.
Let’s take a look at how we can do that for Instapage.
In Ahrefs, you can look at data from a prefix, or in this case, a specific folder path. All Instapage’s product pages fit nicely into this /products/ path, so I will use that to dig deeper.
Because I want to look at all keyword data from each of these pages (there aren’t too many), I like to use the Site Explorer tool called “Top pages” under the “Legacy” section.
This gives me a nice breakdown of all their product pages with keyword data:
Now, I can isolate specific product page keyword data to see if I want to use the same keyword targeting for my product pages.
Let’s isolate their landing page builder page as this is very similar to the Unbounce product.
I can see that the keyword that matches commercial intent with the most volume is “landing page builder.” If I were creating a landing page builder product page, I may consider this keyword as my primary keyword target.
I could also consider the other keywords particular to that product page for secondary keywords to place in my H2s or elsewhere in my content.
Similarly, I can do this same type of SaaS product page keyword research for Solutions pages.
Pro Tip: When doing SaaS competitor keyword research compare at least three top ranking competitors to see if there is any variety in keyword rankings. Sometimes one site will target different keywords than another and understanding why can be helpful in creating your plan.
Write SEO-optimized Product, Solution, and Blog Content
Now that you have done your keyword research around product, solution, and blog content it is time to write.
It makes the most sense to create the foundational content for your SaaS website first, so I recommend creating the content for your product and solution pages first.
These are also your money-making pages, so spend some time creating effective content that really helps your SaaS stand out amongst competitors and by optimizing it for your target keywords.
Product and solution pages are very subjective to your SaaS, but you have a bit more flexibility in creating blog content.
However, you just don’t want to find a bunch of blogs that your competitors are writing and ranking for and duplicate them.
There are multiple factors you need to consider before putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).
Factors to consider before writing SaaS blog content are:
Is the topic related to a solution that my SaaS provides?
For example, check out these recent blog posts from Unbounce that are all related to a landing page solution.
Does the topic have ample keyword volume?
For example, does the primary keyword or the combination of potential keywords you can rank for add up to an attractive total.
Unbounce’s page on “What is a landing page?” targets the following keywords (and 955 in total!) making for an attractive target:
How many links do I need to rank for the primary keyword?
The competition of a primary keyword is a very important consideration in determining how much effort you want to put into going after it.
Using the same example above, let’s drill down on the top ranking keyword of “landing page” and see some data from Ahrefs.
This keyword has a Keyword Difficulty (KD) of 83 out of 100 and is estimated to take 427 links to rank in the top 10.
Consider Keyword Difficulty when analyzing content you might want to rank for.
As a good rule of thumb, early-stage SaaS websites should target topics with really low KD to give themselves the best chance of driving traffic.
Ok, now you have decided on some blog content to write and you are onto the next step.
Use “The Skyscraper Technique” for Content Marketing and Link Building Prowess
If not, it is a content marketing and link building strategy made popular by Backlinko to drive lots of traffic and backlinks to one huge content piece. According to Backlinko, the steps to execute The Skyscraper Technique are:
Step 1: Find link-worthy content
Step 2: Make something even better
Step 3: Reach out to the right people
Step 1: Find link-worthy content
Finding link-worthy content is actually quite easy based on some of the steps for finding keywords I showed you above. The same keyword research tools also show link metrics.
For example, the Top Pages report – which shows you the pages with the most organic traffic – also shows how many referring domains (RD) a URL has.
Unbounce’s “What is a Landing Page” guide has 1,377 links at the time of this writing!
This is a very linkable asset it seems. Now on to step two.
Step 2: Make something even better
The definition of “something better” is somewhat subjective. In the SEO world however, we can look at some key factors to determine how awesome a page is and why so many people link to it.
For starters, it has a clean, simple to read design with lots of graphics and even a high-quality video.
It has custom infographics like this one above on how landing pages fit into a marketing funnel.
It also answers all types of questions related to landing pages such as “What are the types of landing pages?” These sections are very intentional and versed in SEO keyword research (remember our teachings above!).
The page is also super in-depth, coming in just shy of 2,000 words.
But one thing that really makes this page awesome is that it is part of a content hub.
Unbounce, in an effort to dominate searches around landing pages, have created this section on landing page articles.
In addition to the “What is a Landing Page?” piece, they have created seven other articles to compliment this classic Hub & Spoke model of content hubs.
If your SaaS is targeting a very specific hub topic, I encourage you to create your own content hub. Check out this post for some awesome examples, or this post on a great resource hub case study.
You could say that it would be really hard to create “better” content than Unbounce has around landing pages, but you could certainly try.
According to Ahrefs, the four criteria used to assess content quality are:
Reaching out to people is perhaps the most important aspect of getting your content to rank. After all, we established that you generally need more links than your competitors to outrank them.
Basically, you want to perform outreach to site owners who have shown that they already link out to similar topics.
Here’s how to do this.
Find the top 10 sites on a topic similar to yours.
Export the links pointing to your competitors into one spreadsheet
Filter your spreadsheet down and remove links from sites that are low-value directories, forums, or sites that may not meet your Domain Rating requirements (such as sub DR15).
Send a custom email with some personalization
Here’s Backlinko’s outreach example:
Now, email outreach to sites that already link to your competitors is not the only way to perform link building. However, if you want to play the numbers game it may be a very viable approach.
You can also consider guest blogging, podcast links, press mentions, or other popular link building strategies.
One criticism of The Skyscraper Technique is that it does not take into account Domain Rating.
From Ahrefs: Domain Rating (DR) shows the strength of a website’s backlink profile compared to the others in our database on a 100-point scale.
For sites with a high DR, they may inherently be able to rank easier than you, with much fewer links than you.
So for SaaS sites with small DRs (<30) going after keywords that are dominated by sites with big DRs (>60), you’ll want to consider this before you start Skyscrapering content.
The Benefit of SaaS Content Marketing
SaaS companies who invest in long-term content marketing strategies have a lot to gain, especially when compared to other marketing channels. Some revealing data from a ProfitWell survey called “Does Content Marketing Actually Work?” provides some of the following benefits:
Admittedly, it is getting harder to stand out from all the noise as so many companies are creating good content. However, this data reveals that it is likely more costly to not invest in content marketing than it is to remain on the fence.
On to You
SaaS SEO is an investment in research, content development, and link building.
Done correctly, it can provide the best ROI of all your marketing efforts which makes it a very viable strategy to execute and get right.
If you need help with your SaaS companies’ SEO, feel free to reach out and get a free consultation.
If you want your content to rank, you will need to know the best link building strategies to use. In today’s video, Digital Elevator Founder and CEO Daniel Lofaso goes over 9 of the most popular link building strategies to use in 2022 with a breakdown of their pros and cons.
These strategies include:
1. Guest Blog Posting 2. Link Requests 3. Broken Link Building 4. Directory Links 5. Reciprocal Link Building 6. Unlinked Mentions 7. Syndication 8. Community Site Links 9. Paying for Links
After watching this video you’ll know about the various ways to approach link building and which strategies you should consider to help rank your, or your clients’, content.
Are you a marketer trying to forecast the potential SEO return on investment (ROI) for an ecommerce website but don’t know where to start?
Good news. You’re going to learn how to do that today.
Here’s a little technique you can showcase to huge ecommerce sites to let them know the potential SEO ROI they can get by ranking for some target keywords.
Here’s the other good news:
You don’t need access to their site’s analytics
You can compare their site to that of their main competitors
The whole analysis will only take you about 30 minutes
You’ll be able to communicate SEO ROI in dollars
So, before you learn how to forecast SEO ROI on ecommerce sites, let me give a little context to this particular evaluation.
Grand Western Steaks: Ecommerce SEO ROI Forecasting
Did you know that you can order steaks, seafood, poultry, and other meats straight to your door?
Of course you did, and this is actually quite a large market, particularly dominated by Omaha Steaks. Perhaps you’ve even ordered a ribeye or two. Mmm.
Anyhow, for this ecommerce SEO ROI forecasting example the focus of my example will be Grand Western Steaks, an ecommerce meat and fine foods provider that doesn’t have anywhere near the search engine results pages (SERPs) dominance of Omaha Steaks.
Because they don’t have the SERP market share of their competitors, therein lies an opportunity to see what the potential ROI of SEO can be.
To do this, I looked at the following areas:
Competitive Analysis & Traffic Value
How Context Matters in Website Optimization
A Potential Monetization Example (Post Optimization)
One thing that you’ll notice in this SEO audit of sorts is that I used some domain-level metrics as well as broke out one example of a single product for a comparison point. If you were to break down the SEO potential of each product on a site of this magnitude, you might as well just go ahead and get the authorization to perform SEO on the whole site.
Breaking out a product or two makes this sort of recommendation easier to digest for the powers that be and almost makes your job of providing this type of analysis a little bit easier.
With some imagination, it would be easy to see how much revenue potential a finely tuned SEO campaign could work across all products.
Anyhow, the first step in this SEO ROI audit is to determine who the competitors are.
Competitive Analysis & Traffic Value
Start with the below competitive analysis to identify opportunities within the search engine results pages for queries related to the products and services provided by Grand Western Steaks (or your client). Namely, high volume keyword opportunities that show buyer intent (more on this below) indicate great potential to increase sales if search engine rankings can be increased.
By evaluating the equivalent monthly cost of traffic from all keywords that the target website/URL ranks for if paid via PPC instead of ranking organically, we are able to get a sense of how valuable a domain’s keyword profile is. @daniellofasoClick to Tweet
We can also compare that to other competitors in the space to estimate how profitable their websites are due to their SEO efforts.
I use Ahrefs to get an idea of these metrics very quickly. Their Site Explorer tool provides a quick overview of the initial information we need to compare competitors.
In this case, I was already familiar with their competitors and ran them each manually through Site Explorer. However, if you are unfamiliar with the competitors of a site you are looking to compare, simply enter some keywords that your target site sells into the SERPs, document the sites that rank in the top three, and then run those sites through Site Explorer to get the below high level info.
Note: Ahrefs also has a “Competing Pages” feature you can use to see what sites they think are similar in keyword targeting.
For this approach, I don’t want to confuse non-marketer CEOs with metrics about backlinks or referring domains, so I just took a screenshot of the metrics that they would actually understand (definitions pulled from Ahrefs):
Organic keywords– Shows the total number of keywords that the target website ranks for in the top 100 organic search results.
Organic traffic– This metric estimates the total monthly search traffic to the target website from the top 100 organic search results. It is calculated as the sum of traffic from all organic keywords for which the target ranks across all countries in our database.
Traffic value– This metric shows the equivalent value of the organic search traffic, should that traffic have been acquired via Google AdWords.
With those definitions in mind, here are the screenshots of the competitors I pulled for this analysis:
Now we have a baseline for how many keywords our site and our competitors have within the top 100 results (organic keywords), how much traffic from those keywords Ahrefs estimates (organic traffic), how much the organic traffic that comes to the site would cost if paid via Google Ads (traffic value), and much Ahrefs estimates a site is paying for Ads (traffic value: PPC).
To help provide a side-by-side comparison, here’s a graph that shows those metrics.
Organic Keywords Share
Organic Traffic
Organic Traffic Value
PPC Value
Grand Western Steaks
6,400
2,100
$2,500
$93
Omaha Steaks
114,000
276,000
$193,000
$134,000
Kansas City Steaks
33,100
37,400
$46,700
$14,700
Allen Brothers
36,000
52,300
$42,800
$12,800
When you put a site up to competitors like this, it’s easy to see how Grand Western Steaks is leaving money on the table.
They have about one fifth of the keyword share as the next closest competitor (Kansas City Steaks), and about 1/18 of that of Omaha Steaks. If you’re wondering why the organic keyword share and the organic traffic share can be so far off, remember that organic keywords shows keywords that rank in the top 100 while organic traffic is an interpretation of clicks.
Solely on the above we know that there is tremendous opportunity to gain some traffic share. You can move straight on to the potential monetization example below if you’d like from here, but I want to show where, exactly, I believe this site is missing out on this traffic.
This is where context comes into play.
Context Matters in Website Optimization
One of the primary opportunities found with the site is the potential optimization of each product. For example, not optimizing for purchase-related keywords — buy, shop, order, sale, wholesale, etc — can lead to lack of rankings for potential customers who have online ordering intent, or as we have seen, lead to the ranking of paid ads where the intent for a purchase is not evident.
For example, a search for “veal cutlets” (something Grand Western Steak is targeting with ads), indicates, according to Google, the intent for a searcher to look for recipes.
Search results for “veal cutlets”
What has been identified across the board on the site, and an area for opportunity as it relates to gaining market share in search engines and better competing for more keywords and selling more products, is including buyer intent optimization to all the products.
For example, the current veal pages are not optimized for buying intent as they lack buying keywords in their title tags. In a way, this site is competing for the recipe searches rather than transactional ones the way it is currently optimized.
An example of an optimized title would be something like “Buy Veal Cutlets Online | Overnight Shipping | Grand Western Steaks”. Additional optimizations to the product pages could also be implemented to better compete for buyer intent keywords (but that is a separate blog altogether).
Potential Monetization Example (Post Optimization)
To forecast the ecommerce SEO return on investment, what I want to do now is find some product-related examples, determine their total search volume, and do some quick calculations. From there, you’d just divide the amount you’d make from the potential revenue by the amount you pay for SEO.
For example, the search “steaks online” gets around 2,900 searches per month in the US. Generally, the top three spots in the search engines get the majority of the clicks:
Rank 1: 70% of clicks = 2,030 clicks
Rank 2: 20% of clicks = 580 clicks
Rank 3: 10% of clicks = 290 clicks
Now let’s assume a 5% conversion rate of paying customers with an average order of $200.
Rank 1: 2,030 clicks x 5% (x $200) = $20,300/month
Rank 2: 580 clicks x 5% (x $200) = $5,800/month
Rank 3: 290 clicks x 5% (x $200) = $2,900/month
Of course, this is just one keyword example amongst 100s of products which demonstrates why the organic values in the chart above for the competitors are so much higher than Grand Western — the competitors have invested in SEO and have keywords that rank well that account for their larger percentage of traffic from search engines.
Rather than going after the entire site and trying to dominate rankings for each product, I’d suggest you take your/your client’s ‘s top five products. Let’s also assign your SEO investment so we can mash the numbers together to get the ROI.
In this example, let’s also assume the five products all have the same search volume, same conversion rate, and average cost of the example above (2,900 searches, 5%, and $200, respectively) for simplicity sake.
You can then calculate the potential revenue of ranking 1-3 for those five, $200 products.
Rank 1: 10,150 clicks x 5% (x $200) = $101,500/month
Rank 2: 2,900 clicks x 5% (x $200) = $29,000/month
Rank 3: 1,450 clicks x 5% (x $200) = $14,500/month
Now, let’s assume the SEO fee is $5,000 a month. We just divide the above revenues by $5,000 to get the ecommerce SEO ROI:
High end ROI: $101,500/month / $5,000 = 20.3 x ROI
Middle ROI: $29,000/month / $5,000 = 5.8 x ROI
Low ROI: $14,500/month / $5,000 = 2.9 x ROI
Of course, this doesn’t account for caveats like the fact that not every product will rank #1, 2, or 3, that these are the only keywords that will result in sales, or that ranking outside of the top three could still equate to sales, or that there will be a ramp up period.
These are just general, big picture numbers, that showcase the potential of SEO for a few select products. But as you can see with Grand Western Steaks, the potential to target some lucrative keywords can pay off.
I use this formula as sort of a proposal for bigger ticket clients and you can too.
What else would you add to this or what other techniques do you use to showcase what SEO can do?
Content Marketing Case Study: How to Find Low Competition, High Volume Keywords
If keywords are the core of SEO, why is it that so many people still go after the wrong ones?
In order to drive traffic to your website you have to utilize keyword research and content marketing strategies that actually give you a chance of ranking quickly.
In today’s post, I want to introduce a content marketing technique that allows you to rank your content with little to no links (links are still one of Google’s most highly aspects of ranking). I call this technique “Holy Grail SEO” and I covered it in-depth on a beautiful post featured on Search Engine Journal.
So what is Holy Grail SEO?
In Arthurian literature the Holy Grail is a cup that allows it’s owners to have infinite abundance. In SEO, using the Holy Grail technique will give you abundance in the form of boatloads of traffic.
The difference in the Holy Grail SEO technique and the actual Holy Grail is that you don’t need to embark on some mystical journey to find it; I’m going to show you how to rock it out right now.
Read on to learn more about how Holy Grail SEO can help you:
Understand how important low competition keywords are to your overall SEO and content marketing strategy
Identify low competition, high volume keyword resources
Utilize keyword competition data to create in-depth, high ranking blogs
The Importance of High Volume, Low Competition Keywords to Your SEO Strategy
Traffic from search engines is an obvious benefit to any website. However, generating that traffic with content that is related to your brand can often prove to be challenging, especially for sites that don’t have the luxury of being able to publish content and automatically begin to drive loads of search engine traffic to it (like some big brands can).
Don’t get caught up in the “publish and pray” approach so many content generators utilize to create content. Don’t just create content for the sake of creating content; be intentional about the content you create as it should provide a return on investment to your business based on the time and resources you put into it.
Whether you are an SEO yourself or doing SEO for your own website, your goal is the same: try to drive (relevant) as much traffic as possible as fast as possible. Because fast traffic is more of a luxury than a reality, we need to implement strategies that help us to satisfy the goals of our clients as well as our own websites. We also want to be able to pull off strategies that allow us to benefit from the search engine traffic that bigger, more established sites generate.
This is especially true for:
Startups
Brand new websites
Websites with little or no domain rating
Brands that are in super competitive industry’s
Any combination of the above
Who should go after low competition or high competition keywords?
As alluded earlier, some sites just can’t compete for certain keywords or topics and therefore may want to consider not exhausting the resources to go after them. These sites might be better off going after topics that are low competition — meaning easier to rank for — while still maintaining some degree of search volume.
So who should go after high competition keywords and why?
When it comes to search engine rankings and correlations, there tend to be a number of important factors that will dictate whether a page will rank or not. To oversimplify what these are (there are over 200 Google ranking factors), here are some of the main factors that may dictate a pages ability to rank:
Topical relevance to search query
Domain rating of the website
Links to the page
In terms of topical relevance, we can all go after any topic that we want and publish pages on them. This, of course, does not mean we will rank for them mostly based on the other two factors mentioned above.
Domain rating, a proprietary Ahrefs’ metric that shows the strength of a target website’s total backlink profile, can provide a major headstart for brands attempting to rank for certain topics. The metric is measured logarithmically from 0-100 to showcase, essentially, how popular a site is. Forbes.com for example, has a domain rating of 93.
This is why a site like Forbes can virtually publish an article on any topic and rank for it. However, smaller sites — or those with smaller domain ratings — may have to work harder at the next metric to get more attention from Google (i.e. rank better).
Links to a page is the other metric that influences how well a page can rank. Often, a page with more links will outrank a page with less links. Sometimes the page with a higher domain rating and less links will still outrank the page that is on a site with a lower domain rating. There is no exact rule for this, this is purely based on correlation.
Anyhow, you need to keep this in mind as a content creator because you should obviously be creating content with the intent of getting as many eyeballs on it as possible. The Holy Grail approach, however, accomplishes this goal by allowing you to be strategic in what topics you target, or put another way, topics you don’t.
Below I will detail how to use data to understand what topics you can potentially rank for easily and how to find them.
Using the Holy Grail SEO Technique to Find High Volume, Low Competition Keywords
Before diving into how to find high volume, low competition keywords we must first understand that the definition of “high volume” is subjective. For example, in some industries a high volume topic may be 500 searches a month, while in others a high volume topic may be 50,000. Either way, you must keep in mind long-tail traffic, which is why we will discuss how to create complete topics that rank for boatloads of keywords.
Method 1: Using Google SERPs to Reverse Engineer Results
When you want to cover a specific topic this is probably one of the best approaches to take. The second approach also allows you to target specific topics, while the third approach involves stealing topics from your competitors.
Starting with the Google search engine results pages (SERPs) to reverse engineer results is a good foray into one of the three options for finding high volume, low competition topics. Here is a case study from one of our financial planning clients, Castle Wealth Management, where we used this approach to great success.
Castle Wealth wanted to cover a blog post on trusts as many of their clients are high net worth. While we like to tackle topics that our clients want, our job as an SEO and content marketing agency is to have conversations with our clients about how to be intentional about the topics we cover. Plus, we knew a topic in the finance industry would put us up against sites like are likely to dominate the space such as Kiplinger (DR 84), Nerd Wallet (DR 86), and Forbes (DR 93).
Here’s how we, and you, can tackle this type of keyword research and determine if a topic is worth going after.
You’ll need some software to make this kind of advanced prospecting happen, and in this case, I use Ahrefs. More specifically, I use their Chrome extension for its data on Domain Rating, Referring Domains, and the Keywords a page ranks for. It’s cool because you can get data directly in the SERPs without having to visit a site or run it through the software.
Anyhow, with the software in place and the topic of trusts to evaluate, we start with some initial searches on generic queries such as “What is a trust.”
As you can see above (and as highlighted), the top result for the topic has a high Keyword Difficulty (29), has a bunch of links (Referring Domains (RD)), and is on a site with a massive Domain Rating (DR) of 89. As you may expect, a topic like this gets a lot of searches per month, 17,000 (indicated by “Volume”).
Because our goal is to be able to realistically rank within the top three search results, we decided to stay away from this topic.
Eventually, we found that the search for “Why would you put your house in a trust” was a really great candidate.
The number one ranking site had these factors that make the topic ideal for our client to go after:
The site has a DR of 31 (not much higher than what our client was at)
The post only had seven Referring Domains
The topic only had a Keyword Difficulty of 5 out of 100
The topic had a search volume of 200
While the search volume of 200 is not particularly high, something we picked up on was the total amount of keywords this post ranked for, over 1,600 (as indicated by the “KW” on the page level).
These signs all looked pretty good, but we wanted to look closer at all the potential long-tail traffic (in Ahrefs) before committing:
As the Darrow Wealth Management site ranked really well for loads of keywords that were related to trusts and many with really low Keyword Difficulty, we knew this was a win.
To summarize why this was a good topic to emulate:
It was related to our clients offerings — they provide financial advice on setting up trusts
The topic had a lot of long-tail traffic potential
The sub-topics and related keywords to the topic were all relatively low Keyword Difficulty
The top-ranking spot did not have a lot of links and was not a site with a really high Domain Rating
So, what are the next steps? Write a bigger, badder blog post!
Let’s teleport about 3-months after we published the blog for Castle Wealth Management and see how we started to compete:
As you can see, the page ranks really well for a large amount of long-tail keywords. What’s more, we only built one backlink to the page and have now benefited from high rankings for nearly 500 keywords.
Take a look at the Google Analytics traffic to see how this post for Castle Wealth continually grew:
And just to provide some silence to the negative Nancy’s out there who think this strategy only works because the target competitor (Darrow Wealth Management) had a modest Domain Rating, check out all the other sites we outrank that are way bigger in DR than Castle Wealth:
This is just one strategy to use when you have topics in mind. In addition to doing research from the Google SERPs, you can go straight to Ahrefs to do the work for you.
Method 2: Using Keyword Software to Target Specific Topics
Another excellent way to find that low hanging fruit content is to use the Ahrefs Content explorer tool. This too allows you to search by topic but offers some additional filters that make it a joy to use.
For this example, we decided to write about the topic “garment bag.”
Start by throwing your topic into the Content explorer:
For generic topics like this, you’ll likely see something like the below — a result with 1,000’s of pages in the index that you’ll want to filter down.
There are a lot of filters that can be utilized and it’s actually quite fun to play around with the tool to generate results, but there are some rules to live by to start finding topics with a lot of keyword traffic.
As you can see above, I set the organic filter to “From:500” to see pages that rank for 500 or more keywords. You can get more aggressive if you have a lot of results to shift through, and vice versa.
In this scenario, filtering out pages without at least 500 ranking keywords left us with 173 pages. Because that is still a lot of pages to review, I can apply more filters to determine if there are better options. Thus, I set an additional filter for a DR above 30. Filtering out sites with a higher DR shows results that apply to smaller sites I can likely compete with easily with good content alone.
This is not a hard and fast rule however; just because a page that lives on a site with high DR ranks well, does not mean it won’t have low competition, high volume topics. In this case, however, there are a lot of results so we have more play in what we can filter out.
Now, with filters set to organic traffic above 500 keywords and sites with a DR below 30, we now have 10 pages to review based on the “garment bag” topic:
The next thing to do is open up the Organic keywords tab on each site to see if there are low competition, high volume keywords that are Holy Grail material.
Boom! And just like that we have our first candidate meets our criteria for Holy Grail SEO:
First off, this page has about 1,200 keywords it ranks for
The page itself only has one referring domain
The volume behind a bunch of the searches compared to the KD is great. Lots of long-tail keywords to consider in our blog post that we’d likely rank for easily.
Now, I can repeat the same process with the other sites in the filtered list to document the keywords my writers should cover in the blog post.
I really like this approach, but my favorite way to find Holy Grail opportunities is analyzing competitors sites and stealing their high volume, low competition topics.
Method 3: Looking at Competitors to Find HV/LCK Keywords
So far we’ve looked at two ways to use topical analysis to find blogs. But what do you do if you don’t have a particular topic in mind or can’t seem to find anything that you like using the other approach?
You mine competitors’ sites, find their best content, and rewrite it.
Let’s check out another example in the financial industries space, an industry that is extremely competitive and full of great content everywhere you look.
To start, you’ll simply want to visit a popular site that is in the same niche as your site. For this example, I referenced NerdWallet because they are really popular in the space and rank well for a lot of topics.
Grab the NerdWallet domain and plug it into the Ahrefs Site explorer to begin the process.
Because this site is a behemoth, it is going to rank for a ton of different keywords so we want to filter down our results. First, I’m going to click on “Top pages” — pages Ahrefs is telling me ranks for a ton of keywords — and set the Keyword Difficulty filter down to 10 (although you can get more aggressive and go lower to see how many results you get).
With our Top pages and KD 10 or below filter in place, we immediately see some really good candidates such as “how to fill out a money order” and “best time to buy a tv” as potential options to cover. Of course, you want to make sure any option you choose to cover is relevant to the audience of your site.
To dive a little deeper, I can open an Organic keyword report for the pages I want to investigate and reference the Volume and Keyword Difficulty. Here’s the report for the “how to fill out a money order” post:
I can see this post ranks for a lot of high volume, low competition keywords making it a solid candidate for a similar post on my (or my clients’) site.
I can even take the main keyword a step further to see how many links I might need to build to rank for it on the first page. “How to fill out a money order’ gets 23,000 searches per month and is a KD 6! According to Ahrefs, I’ll need about seven links to rank on the first page.
Utilize Keyword Competition Data to Create In-depth, High Ranking Blogs
Now, if there is something that needs to be mentioned it’s the fact that you can’t simply publish any old blog and expect it to rank. In other words, you’ve only done some of the hard work required to give yourself the best chance of ranking. The next part is actually writing the blog you want to rank.
Great keyword research needs great writing!
While this is not a post on how to write a good blog, it is integral that you carry out good copywriting to give yourself the best chance of ranking. Here are a few resources that may help you with that:
In addition to good writing, I want to emphasize the importance of being truly exhaustive with the topics you cover. This means doing a competitive analysis of the other pages that rank for your target keyword and making something more in-depth and ultimately better.
A great way to do this is with the inclusion of keyword rich subtopics. The good news for you is that these should already be revealed when you did your initial topic research.
For example, let’s review the keyword data from the “garment bags” research to see if we can pull some sub-topics.
Ok, great.
We have a bunch of good data on volume and KD but is this alone going to make your blog rock? No, it needs a little logical thinking to ensure the post has good talking points while also being intentional about the keyword opportunities.
Let’s go with a topic for our post that is general but seems to cover the keyword opportunities we found. Something like “17 Best Garment Bags of 2019.”
Now, let’s take your keyword data and make something of an outline for the post that flows logically and still leverages the keyword data intelligently.
Best roll up garment bags
Best carry on garment bags
Best garment bags with wheels
Garment bag carry on rules
When to get a tri fold garment bag
As you can see, my keyword research has dictated my subtopics. If you think about it, it really should as volume has everything to do with interest in a topic. Thus, it makes sense to cover high volume subtopics.
Another great area to pull additional sub-topics (leaning more on the logical side) is within the Google SERPs. Check out the “People also ask” section as well as the “Searches related to” sections for inspiration:
Embark on Your Quest for Holy Grail SEO Today!
Holy Grail SEO is something that will work for every kind of site, big or small, high DR or low DR, and those with lots of human resources at their disposal and those without.
The research portion gets easier the more you do it and can actually become second nature once you get the hang of it. And while we never rule out content promotion or link building as additional was to drive traffic and exposure, it’s nice to know you can lean on Holy Grail SEO without having to dedicate a bunch of resources to social promotion or link building.
Try Holy Grail SEO yourself and enjoy the abundance it brings your website!
Are you tasked with selling SEO to your CEO? Or, do you know that SEO is a really good option for your company’s marketing dollars but you need to get the c-suite on board with your SEO recommendation?
This blog is for you.
As someone who has sold or pitched SEO to countless CEOs and c-suite executives, I’ve learned a thing or two about talking the talk and walking the walk. Also, for what it’s worth, I’m a CEO too.
What Not to Say to CEOs When Selling them SEO
One thing I’ve learned about about talking to CEOs about SEO is that they have no desire to hear about how much you know about algorithms or how it all works. Don’t waste your time talking about link profiles, canonical URLs, alt tags, meta data, or any technical SEO.
CEOs care about numbers, costs and profits. Hit them here, and not by showing off your knowledge of technical SEO, and you will have their ear.
Put Yourself in Your CEOs Shows When Talking about SEO
CEOs are busy. You have to understand that (unless they ask) they really only want to know a data-driven answer as to why you think your company should invest its marketing dollars somewhere else. CEOs care about results. Give them an answer as to how they will get them and you may win them over.
You need to be able to communicate to them quickly and efficiently:
Communicate in terms of business goals.
Communicate in terms of risk.
Remember, that executives have bosses too.
Be aware of your company’s budgeting and planning.
Think like a boss – know the most you can about how SEO can help the company.
CEOs are decision-makers, not problem-solvers. They are going to ask:
Why should we invest in SEO vs. [insert another strategy here]?
What profits can you estimate?
How long is it going to take?
What are the KPIs?
How many widgets do we have to sell to justify the costs?
Can we do this in-house?
Point Out the Competition’s Strategy
I once had a CEO tell me he wanted to “suffocate the competition” in the business sense. Showing a CEO that their competitors are having success with SEO — and assigning a revenue estimate to it — can make them move faster than a fiddler attracts a square dance. Show them the actual search results for the keywords you’d like to rank for. Next, explain that the reason the competition is showing up on the first page, and you’re not, is because you don’t have SEO services.
Show Them Some Credible Stats that Back-up Your Results Claims
72% of marketers say content creation is the most effective SEO tactic (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
71% of B2B research starts with generic searches. (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
57% of B2B marketers agree that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation. (Searchmetrics)
Better yet, if you have some tracking in place, maybe you have some solid metrics that showcase previous successes with organic search.
Example: We had a big real estate development client with a CEO who was known as a ball-buster. SEO was never really on the table — he was more on board with PPC — until his marketing team showed him data that proved CPA with SEO was cheaper, and more effective, than display. He changed his tune and they are still enjoying success from it today.
Put the Emphasis on ROI
Estimating ROI is challenging but if you are somewhat savvy you should be able to get some estimates on this. For example, say your budget is $1000. Your average order is $50. This means you have to sell at least 20 items to break even (not including overhead).
If you can show that you expect to sell 40 items after 4 months of SEO, and make $2000, and up to 100 items after 8 months ($5000), and more, then you will have a strong case for generating the budget and green light.
Setting Expectations with CEOs
With all things marketing, you have to set proper expectations. The last thing you want to do is say SEO will take a few months to ramp up when you know it will take 10. If you are pressured to get more immediate results, consider bringing PPC into the mix alongside SEO.
Ever wonder why you can’t rank first in Google for your brand’s name? This post will show you how.
As an SEO company that regularly helps clients build their brands, it’s been natural for us to get a few clients that want to rebrand under a different name. Naturally, they want to rank for Google searches for their new brand name, and sometimes this can require more effort than other times.
In fact, when Digital Elevator was started, the phrase “Digital Elevator” was associated with some LG (the TV-makers) ad that had some global reach. That meant that I had to do a bit more legwork to get my brand name to rank first for searches for the company.
But, as I would find out, and as I have come to find with others clients, my brand name was slightly generic and this brought out a very important consideration for how difficult it would be to rank number one:
My brand name was slightly generic and this brought out a very important consideration for how difficult it would be to rank number one:
That’s right, the context of your brand name has a lot to do with its difficulty ranking it first. For example, I once led an SEO campaign for a cosmetic dentistry website that featured a product called “Lumineers,” a type of dental veneer. At one point, we had the Lumineers page on our website ranking second, just under the brand’s website, until Google came along and made some context-related changes to the search engine results pages (SERPs).
As you may know, there is a band called “The Lumineers,” and these guys became very popular shortly after our dentistry website was created. Because Google figured that a search for “Lumineers” was more likely to be for the band than the dental product, the context of this search, at least in Google’s eyes, leaned more towards results for the band.
This remains true for this search to this day; Lumineers, the band, dominates the SERPs while the dental product only shows up once on the front page:
This is a perfect example of how context – for a brand trying to rank or for rankings generally – can present a challenge for ranking.
In the case of Digital Elevator, we were able to successfully rank number one for our brand as well as fill the first page of the SERPs with our social media profiles. This is the marking of a successful branding campaign. I’ll teach you how to do this below.
If your company is like Lumineers, the type of name that exists already and is associated with something else, the likelihood of you ranking first depends on a few things:
How popular your company is compared to the other product/service/person
The context of the phrase that comprises your brand name
How much SEO you are willing to do
Now, I don’t want to get your hopes up if you just named your company Coca-Cola Paint and want to have it rank for “Coca-Cola.” You’ll never do this, no matter how much money you spend on SEO.
If Google feels a phrase is contextually related to something specific, it will always want to deliver that result to searchers in an attempt to match their perceived intent.
If Google feels a phrase is contextually related to something specific, it will always want to deliver that result to searchers in an attempt to match their perceived intent.
However, if there is not some megabrand, band, or phrase dominating the space, you may have a shot.
How to Rank for Your Brand Name
Ok, so you’ve made the decision to rank for your brand name. Here’s how to give it the ol’ “college try.”
1. Get the exact match domain
In my case, I bought the domain name thedigitalelevator.com. According to Moz’s Search Engine Ranking Factors 2015, Domain-Level Keyword Usage, or having “exact-match keyword domains, partial-keyword matches, etc.” is the seventh most highly correlated ranking signal.
If this is already taken as a .com, you can always try to buy a different TLD: .tv, .co, .biz, etc. A dot com is always going to be your best bet, but in an effort to maintain branding consistency and play nice with ranking correlations, I’d advise this. Of course, you have to take a look at whether or not a brand that owns the dot com is ranking and if you want to compete with that.
2. Update all of Your Social Media Accounts
Slightly less tricky than getting the domain, but tricky nonetheless, getting all of your social media profiles to have your brand name in them is your next step.
Facebook
Facebook, being the nice guys that they are, will allow you to change your page name once, and only once. They will also allow you to change your business URL as well… but only once.
Obviously, with Facebook and all of your social media accounts, you want to change the name rather than create a new profile because you want to maintain your followers.
Twitter
Twitter has far less strict rules about name changes than Facebook, but this doesn’t always mean the @name you want will be available. If it is, you’re home free. If not, you have a couple of options:
Contact the person who is using the handle you want and negotiate (you’ll have a better chance of getting this if they don’t use it and if they don’t have any followers)
File a trademark issue with Twitter. You will, of course, have to prove all of this.
Instagram
Changing your name on Instagram is pretty easy as well. Here’s how.
If you refer to the above Moz graphic, you’ll see the most highly correlated ranking signal is Domain-Level Link Features. This would include link metrics such as the quantity of links, the trust of those links, domain-level PageRank of those links, etc.
Link building may be the single most important thing you do in your effort to rank for your brand, but you’ll still want to do the other items mentioned above.
Link building may be the single most important thing you do in your effort to rank for your brand
So, what is a brand-based link? For me, a link that used the anchor text “Digital Elevator” is what I’d be shooting for. If you were to take a look at my backlink profile and that of most brands, you’d see that most instances of links to our sites include the brand name as the link text. Ex. a link to the Yankees website would be Yankees.
If you wanted to increase the likelihood that you would rank for your brand name, building links with the anchor text of your brand name would be the most powerful way to do so.
If you don’t have the resources to build links (or simply don’t know how), you have another option. You could try to make changes to the instances of your brand around the web and see how that does. This assumes that your brand is preexisting though and has mentions on the web. To do this, you’d find all the sites on the internet that mention your brand but don’t link to it, and ask them to.
When you are building links for your website you got to be very precise on what you do. Every marketeer worth their salt knows what a backlink is. Building backlinks can quickly become a minefield of mistakes and mishaps for the uninformed SEO. Check out this step-by-step process on how to build backlinks the right way in 2018.
Rank for Your Brand Name: Next Steps
After reading this post you should have a good idea of whether or not the brand name you want to rank for will actually have a shot of ranking first on Google. If it is super-generic, your chances become much harder, but this doesn’t mean it is impossible.
Regardless, you should try and update your domain to have an exact match of your brand name or at least contain the main words. Secondly, update your social media profiles so that they are all consistent with your new brand name.
Finally, build links to your website using the exact words of your brand name. This will be the most powerful thing you can do but will also be the most time-consuming, depending on how competitive or contextually challenging that name is.
If you have any specific questions about how to do this, for help doing this, or to determine how viable this would be, feel free to reach out to me or comment below.
If you own a gym or some other type of fitness establishment (ex. CrossFit), there’s a good chance a bulk of your leads will come from your website. Thing is, you may not know how to optimize your gym’s website for SEO or how to get the most out of the traffic it currently generates.
As a whole, it seems there is continued interest in health and fitness as revealed by Google Trends data.
As the above information clearly shows an upward interest in gym-related search engines queries, you’ll want to do all you can to get a piece of the pie.
Keep the below information handy when building out your gym website or if you are a web development agency building out gym websites for your clients.
A good gym website includes these five must-have elements
You ever go to a website for the first time and feel like you’ve been there before? That feeling creates a sense of trust in a brand and you’ll want to try to establish that right off the bat with your gym website. Here are some standard items that should be on your site:
1. Address and contact info
Gyms are highly localized businesses meaning your target audience will only travel so far to get to you. According to a poll conducted by BrightLocal, clients will drive a shorter distance to local businesses that offer leisure pursuits. The gym, in this poll, was a business that merited a 12-minute drive time.
It goes without saying that people will want to know where your gym is before they sign up so make this information easy to find. I recommend embedding a Google Map of your business on a clearly identified contact page.
2. Photos of interior and amenities
If someone is going to spend their hard-earned money on a monthly commitment like a gym, they are going to want to know what it looks like inside. Invest in a professional photographer for this one and leave the dark, foggy, cell phone images for social media.
3. Your offerings and membership packages
Like a restaurant should showcase their menu, your gym should showcase the services or classes it offers. Each service should get its own dedicated page as to provide it the best opportunity to rank in the search engines. Learn more about that in this gym SEO case study.
The membership packages are also huge items your potential clients will be looking for. Take it a step further by mentioning the membership packages on the site, everything that is included in them, and provide clients the ability to checkout right online.
4. Testimonials
Nothing says your gym is awesome like recommendations from your existing clients. Get testimonials, reviews, and before and after transformations and put them on a dedicated page on your site as well as a few on the homepage.
5. Way to get a free pass
A great way to get leads is to offer a free pass. Some gyms offer a free pass for a few days, others offer a free month if the member signs up with a credit card. The latter approach may work best as it gets them in the system, allows for more time to get acclimated to the gym, and provides the whole satisfaction guarantee thingy (if you have one).
On-page Elements Set the Tone for Your Ability to Rank
Going along with number three above, some of the best things a gym website can have to attract more search engine traffic are some solid on-page elements.
If you want to try to rank a spinning class for your gym in Chicago for example, you’d be advised to do something like the following for your spinning class page:
Create a title tag like “Spinning Classes Chicago- [gym name]”
Create a H1 like “Spinning Classes Chicago”
Create a URL like “example.com/spinning-classes-chicago”
Add “spinning classes Chicago” within the content of that page
Add an image and make the ALT attributes have the words “spinning class Chicago” in them
Schema.org is a Search Engine’s Best Friend
Schema.org is a vocabulary that is used to help webmasters and developers communicate what their pages are about in a search engine-friendly way. Google, Bing and Yahoo all sponsor Schema.org and these schema’s, called structured data, are a great way to get more interest from search engines to your local site.
If you don’t have WordPress, the quickest way to get this HTML is Schema Creator.
Business Directory Listings/Citations are a Must for Local SEO
According to data from Moz, external website signals like citations (a fancy way of saying directory listings but a citation can also mean simply a mention of your business online) are one of the most important ranking factors.
The most important of these by far is Google My Business, a free listing that allows you to take ownership of the way your business appears online. The idea with citations is to claim as many as possible, starting with the ones that already rank on the first page for searches related to your gym.
For example, a Google search for “gym Chicago” currently reveals Yelp at the first two spots. That would be a great place to list your gym since that is likely a highly popular page. Other important directory listings include Facebook, data aggregators like LocalEze, gym-specific directories like FitLink, or region-specific directories like http://www.denver.com/places.
There are some great services that offer citation building for you such as BrightLocal and WhiteSpark. Digital Elevator offers citation building as part of our local SEO packages and you can always just do it yourself (check this blog for a nice list of citations).
There are no hard and fast rules to how many citations you should build but generally we build our local SEO clients anywhere from 40 to 100.
A Review Strategy is Great for Social Proof and SEO
To get reviews, send out emails to existing clients you know love you and provide them with the links to your directory listings so they can leave their five-star reviews. You can also create links to your directory pages on your site so they are visible and can be navigated to easily.
Link Building is Tough but a Major Ranking Factor
Links are probably one of the hardest things to do for a local business. They are also one of the most important; the aforementioned Moz study we linked to early puts link signals as the second most important ranking factor for local SEO.
When you’re building links it’s important to have in mind that this work is time-consuming and sometimes very hard. To ease your work you can use this tool – Linkio.com which can be a huge time saver and also will automate your process and give you the exact link building game plan for any target website.
Gyms are really mini communities so it always helps to try and showcase what your community is like through your website. Still, before you can do that you’ll have to actually get people to come to your website.
Take the above advice and implement it into your website to help your gym rank for all of the classes, services and amenities it offers. These same principles can be applied to small gyms or CrossFit-like establishments.
If you have any questions or other input, please feel free to reach out to me or leave a comment below.
