Your ideal customers could find your business from a lot more keywords than you probably realise.
A good SEO content writer knows how to cover all bases and consider all the keywords customers could be using, e.g. category keywords, bottom of funnel keywords, comparison keywords, and alternative keywords, etc.
We’ll go through these types of different keywords later on in the guide.
The problem with how most SaaS companies do keyword research
As an SEO strategist/copywriter, I spend a lot of my time helping websites brush up their SEO and copywriting.
I’ve dealt with a lot of SEO cases over the years — from the industry giants hunting for competitive keywords to the small businesses searching for low-volume, local keywords.
Most folks target the wrong keywords because of one common mistake:
They don’t tie their keyword strategy to their business strategy.
Rather than picking their keywords strategically, they simply chase every single keyword related to their niche or industry and hope for the best.
This leads to wasted resources, because you spend all your time gunning for keywords that produce no results.
Start by targeting keywords that tie into your audience’s interests.
The more specific, the better.
Let’s talk about how to target great keywords based on audience interest:
A better way of doing SaaS keyword research
It’s easier to find good, specific keywords if you understand the your customers’ pain points.
“What’s a pain point?” I hear you ask.
Good question.
A pain point is basically a problem or challenge that your customers face. It’s something that causes discomfort, frustration, or a need for improvement.
When people face these challenges, they’ll sometimes search for queries related to their pain points.
The folks over at Grow and Convert call these types of keywords pain-point keywords.
I wrote a guide digging into some of these keywords.
You can read that SaaS keyword research guide here.
Most of these keywords work the same way:
You simply target the pain-point keyword and present your SaaS product as the solution to alleviate that pain point.
Of course, that’s easier said than done right?
Let’s break it down into three steps:
1. List down the main pain points
Simply note down three or four challenges you help clients solve with your products and services. Start from there.
Pick out the recurring customer complaints, challenges, or frustrations in your niche.
These pain points often translate into keywords.
For example, let’s say we’re running a SaaS company providing a video editing software.
These are some of the challenges customers could be facing when deciding on a video editing software:
- Hard to learn: Some software is difficult for beginners to figure out.
- Expensive: Good video editing software can be costly, and not everyone can afford it.
- Time-consuming: Editing videos can be time-consuming.
- No options for collaborative work: Some software makes it hard for people to edit videos together, which is important for group projects.
2. Brainstorm keyword ideas based on pain points
Once you know what the pain points are, it’s easier to guess what your target audience will be searching.
If you need some help finding ideas, I’d recommend using ChatGPT to brainstorm keyword ideas.
Open up ChatGPT and type in this search query.
I want to write an article targeting <insert your clients and their pain points>. List some examples of keywords my target audience could be searching for.
We can try it out with our SaaS company example:
I want to write an article targeting people looking for cheap video editing software. List some examples of keywords my target audience could be searching for.
Now these might not be the exact keywords people are searching on Google, but it gives us a good base to start from.
Pick out some keywords from ChatGPT’s list. No more than 5 or 6.
Then you can use Ahrefs’ Keyword Generator to review them one at a time.
If I type this keyword cheap video editing software into Ahrefs’ Keyword Generator, I can get suggestions for similar keywords people are searching.
Two steps.
Step one: type your keyword into the Keyword Generator search bar.
Step two: Pick the keywords that are most relevant and have a good keyword difficulty to search volume ratio.
The best thing about it? Ahrefs Keyword Generator is free. So you don’t even have to pay a dime to get this info.
However, Ahrefs Keyword Generator shows a limited amount of keywords on its free version.
So if you’re looking to tap into more keyword data and opportunities, you’d be better off getting the full version of a keyword tool.
3. Create content that solves pain points
Once you’ve got your keyword, the final step is to create content that perfectly fits what Google and your customers are looking for.
How do you know what they’re looking for?
The top search results for your keyword will give you a clue.
Again, let’s circle back to our video editing software scenario.
A peek at the top 10 pages quickly reveals that comparison posts perform the best for our target keyword cheap video editing software.
Google’s mission is to deliver the most relevant results. It understands exactly what its users want to see.
In this scenario, people searching cheap video editing software want to see content that compares the best and cheapest video editing software.
A comparison post would work best.
It’d be hard to rank a different content format for that keyword, e.g. a landing page or a Ten Benefits of Using Video Editing Software article.
Try it out yourself.
Look at the top search results for your keyword.
Follow the same format as their content, but make it better.
If it’s a comparison post, knock it out of the park.
If it’s a review, write a better, more detailed one.
Then find a way to pitch your product or service in the content.
Now it’s easier to find specific pain point keywords like cheap video editing software when you’re selling a product in an industry as popular as video editing.
The more popular the industry, the more variety of searches.
You have more keywords to go after.
That’s why there are so many variations of the keyword video editing software.
This becomes harder when your product is more niche, e.g. time event management software or veterinary software.
And in that case, you’ll need to know about the other keywords you can target:
Types of SaaS keywords
Category keywords
Users searching for these keywords are likely ready to invest in a solution and are looking for the best options in the category.
Example: If your product is a project management software, a good category keyword might be project management software.
But you could break your keywords into smaller categories or target similar variations.
For example, you could target more specific category keywords related to various features (e.g. task tracking, collaboration tools, etc), industry sectors (e.g. IT, construction, etc) or product category variations (e.g. software or apps).
So these are the variations we could get target for the keyword project management software, depending on niche:
- task management software
- team collaboration software
- IT project management software
- project management software for construction
Comparison keywords
Users entering these queries are in the comparison phase and are actively seeking the best fit for their needs.
An example of a comparison keyword is asana vs. trello.
For context, Asana is a widely used project management software. And Trello is one of their biggest competitors.
They targeted that keyword to attract people who are weighing their options and deciding between Asana and Trello for their project management needs.
And, of course, because it’s an Asana-written article, the content will put more effort to pitch Asana’s software as the go-to solution.
Textbook SEO.
Alternative keywords
Another keyword that Asana could have targeted is alternatives to trello.
Alternative keywords are slightly similar to comparison keywords, except they target the people looking for alternative options to your competitors.
So there’s an even better opportunity for you to slide in and present your product or service as that alternative option.
More coming soon
