The Only SaaS Keyword Research SOP You Need To Get 1000s of Topics In 1 Hour

Keyword research is like a treasure hunt for your business. 

It's all about finding the right words and phrases your potential customers use to search for products like yours. 

Uncovering the right queries can help you optimize your website content, improve your search engine rankings, and ultimately drive more traffic and conversions.

Yet many businesses fail to do it properly.

In this guide, we’re giving you a proven SaaS keyword research SOP that we use to help our clients rank while outranking their competition.

Let’s dive in.

What is SaaS Keyword Research?

SaaS keyword research is the process of discovering relevant keywords your audience uses on search engines like Google to find the product that is solving their problem.  

It’s not limited only to commercial or branded keywords. 

Let’s say you have a project management tool.

You can't only create content for keywords like “Notion vs Asana” or “Notion review.” 

You should also create content for keywords such as “best project management tools” or “what is project management.” 

These keywords allow you to drive qualified traffic to your website and potential leads to sign up through actionable CTAs.

Once you find relevant keywords through the keyword research process, you can use them in your SEO campaigns.

Here’s how keyword research evolved with Google’s algorithm changes.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

Keyword research is crucial for your SaaS growth because:

• It helps you understand your target audience and identify the right keywords to target. 
• By identifying the right keywords, you can optimize your website and drive targeted traffic to your site.
• Keyword research helps businesses stay ahead of their competitors by identifying the keywords they are targeting and finding opportunities to differentiate themselves.

Overall, investing time and effort into effective keyword research can be a game-changer for your SaaS business.

So, let’s go through the steps of identifying keywords for your SaaS business.

How to Identify Target Keywords Using 5 Effective Ways(+BONUS Tip)

Keyword research is all about finding the right words and phrases that your target audience is searching for. 

So, how to identify the keywords that will attract the right audience to your website?

Here are some of the best steps to follow:

1. Understand Your Target Audience

To effectively conduct keyword research, it is crucial to have a deep understanding of your target audience. 

This involves identifying their needs, preferences, and pain points. 

By knowing what your audience is looking for, you can tailor your SaaS product and marketing efforts to meet their specific requirements. 

Conducting surveys, analyzing customer feedback, and studying competitor strategies can provide valuable insights into your target audience.

But you can also use a customer journey map to simplify this process.

Mapping your customer journey can have two SEO keyword research-orientated goals: 

• Generating new leads for your SaaS platform.
• Influencing existing leads to generate revenue for your business.

How can you create an accurate customer journey? 

Get into your CRM and analyze the content that people consume before generating revenue or becoming a lead. 

Different types of leads will consume different types of content.

For example, perhaps SQLs consume hyper-product-specific blogs, customer case studies, or YouTube video tutorials. 

Identify the successful types of content you have that help move people through your customer funnel. 

Identify the keywords that support that content, and create more content to give it all the best chance of being seen by more people at the right time.

Pro Tip: Run a keyword gap analysis on your current content to see how you can optimize it for search.

2. Leverage Google Autosuggest

Leveraging Google Autosuggest for keyword research is a straightforward yet effective method. 

Let’s say you already identified “youtube video creation” as your seed keyword.

Here's how to do it step by step:

Step 1. Begin typing your seed keywords into the search bar. 

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As you type, Google Autosuggest will provide you with a dropdown list of suggested search queries based on what other users are commonly searching for.

Pay attention to the autocomplete suggestions that appear as you type your seed keyword. 

These suggestions are based on real user queries and can give you valuable insights into popular search terms related to your SaaS business.

You can even go deeper.

For example, here are more queries once we type “youtube video creation software.”

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We now have more keyword phrases like “best youtube video editing software for beginners” and “best youtube video editing software” to target. 

Depending on their search volumes and KDs, you can create individual pages targeting these keywords or use them as secondary keywords supporting the primary one.

Pro tip: Enter your seed keyword into the Google search, hit space, and then start replacing letters one by one from A to Z.

It will help you identify all the keywords related to your seed keyword.

Seems like a long process?

Here’s how to simplify it.

Navigate to AnswerThePublic, enter your seed keyword, hit Enter, and you’ll get all these keywords in a second.

3. Review GSC Data(If you have any - if not, skip to step 4)

Here's a step-by-step process on how to conduct keyword research for a SaaS business using Google Search Console (GSC) data:

Step 1. Access your Google Search Console account and select the property you want to analyze.

If you open GSC and click on “Performance” from the left-hand navigation, you’ll find a list of all of the queries you rank for in Google by default, including these metrics:

• Clicks
• Impressions
• CTR (Click-through-rate)
• Position in Google

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Below, you'll find a section with valuable data on the search queries that users are using to find your website over time.

Step 2. It’s good practice to use filters within GSC to narrow down the data. 

This helps you review the list of search queries that users used to find your website over time. 

Look for queries that are directly related to your SaaS product, industry, features, or solutions. 

Pay attention to queries with high impressions but low click-through rates, as these may indicate opportunities for creating new content or optimization.

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CHECK OUT OUR COMPLETE SAAS CONTENT AUDIT GUIDE TO OPTIMIZE YOUR CONTENT

Write those queries down, and identify relevant keywords that align with your SaaS business objectives. 

Note: Look for keywords with a combination of relevance to your product, low keyword difficulty, and potential for conversion. 

Here, long-tail keywords, questions, and informational queries that indicate user intent can be a place to start with.

Those keywords can help you find high-intent keywords to help you create content directly related to your product and help you bring conversions.

Pro tip: Find all of the questions you rank for using the regex command:

^(who|what|where|when|why|how)[” “]

It will give you all the questions you currently rank for:

• Who
• What
• Where
• When
• Why
• How

4. Utilize the Keyword Research Tool

Now that you have a list of keywords ready, you need to put them into your SEO keyword research tool, like Ahrefs, to get data and metrics on your keywords. 

Use the “Keyword Explorer" tool to discover new keyword opportunities related to your SaaS business.

Enter seed keywords, topics, or phrases relevant to your industry or target audience, and Ahrefs will give a list of related keywords along with their metrics.

For example, when we search the keyword “youtube video editing,” here’s what Ahrefs shows:

This helps you shortlist the keywords that will benefit your business. 

For example, you don’t want to waste resources creating content for keywords that are very difficult to rank for.

Narrow down the list of your keyword ideas by applying filters based on search volume, KD(keyword difficulty), CPC (cost per click), and other metrics. 

Focus on keywords with high search volume, low difficulty, and commercial intent.

Here are some best practices to follow: 

• Avoid high-difficulty keywords, as these might be difficult to rank for. (If you are a SaaS business with a high DR, then you can target these keywords.) 
• Eliminate keywords that won’t bring relevant traffic to your website. 
• Remove short-tail keywords(one or two-word phrases) and include more long-tail keywords, as these are easier to rank for.

5. Run a Keyword Competitive Analysis

If you want to get keywords from your competitors, here are the steps that can help you out:

1. Analyze Competitor Keywords 

Let’s say we have YouTube video creation software and one of our main competitors is veed.io.

Enter your competitors' website URLs into Ahrefs' Site Explorer tool to analyze their organic keywords and backlink profiles. 

Identify keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but you're not. 

These keywords represent potential opportunities for your SaaS business.

As you can see, veed.io currently ranks for over 220k keywords.

So, there are a lot of keywords we cannot rank from the start.

To narrow down keywords and identify low-hanging fruits that you can rank for, filter those keywords following these filter settings:

• KD up to 25
• Position from 1 to 10
• Keyword > Contains > Partial match > video editing(seed keyword)

Voila!

We got over 100 high-intent keywords that we can potentially rank for pretty easily.

Targeting the right long-tail keywords, you’ll find yourself standing out as the number one solution within the search engine results pages. 

Export those keywords, organize them into categories, prioritize the ones that are most related to your product, and put them into a content plan to create blog posts or landing pages for them.

But how to prioritize those keywords:

Here are a few best practices you can use to prioritize them based on:

• Relevance to your product, 
• Intent - where the searcher is in the sales funnel stage
• Content type — e.g., templates, blogs, videos, landing pages, etc. 
• Search volume,
• Number of referring domains

To support your decision-making and to help you prioritize your content, you can use the metrics mentioned above. 

Note: Keep in mind to check your quarterly and yearly goals to identify which type of content helps you go towards them.

2. Identify Keyword Gaps 

If you have a Standard Paid plan, you can use Ahrefs' Content Gap tool to compare your website's keyword rankings with those of your competitors. 

This will help you identify gaps in your content strategy and find opportunities to target new keywords that your competitors are ranking for.

By running the keyword gap analysis, you’ll spot a lot of new content opportunities to create content for and to outrank your competitors.

Focus on long-tail keywords

When it comes to keyword optimization, don't underestimate the power of long-tail keywords. 

These are longer and more specific phrases that target a niche audience. 

While they may have lower search volumes, they often have higher conversion rates. 

By incorporating long-tail keywords into your website content and meta tags, you can attract highly relevant traffic and increase your chances of capturing qualified leads. 

Additionally, long-tail keywords can help you stand out from the competition and improve your search engine rankings. 

So, don't be afraid to dig deep and find those unique and targeted keywords that will bring you the most success!

BONUS: Leverage Reddit and Quora to Identify Low-hanging Fruits

Did you know that if Quora or Reddit ranks for your product keywords, most of the time, it means these keywords have low competition, and it won't be hard for you to rank for them.

Here's the process.

Navigate to Ahrefs or SemRush - the process is the same for both of the tools.

1. Enter the Quora or Reddit URL and navigate to the "Organic keywords" section.

You’ll get a list of all the keywords that these platforms rank for.

Here, select filter Keyword > Contains > Partial match and then enter your seed keyword.

Let's say your SaaS product is a productivity app.

Simply enter "productivity app" within the keyword section, pick Partial match, and hit Enter.

Results?

171 potential keywords in a matter of seconds.

Sounds interesting, right?

We got a list of all the keywords that Quora or Reddit rank for related to our niche.

We can go even a step further and set a filter on Keyword difficulty up to 30 and the Top 10 position.

This will help us find low-hanging fruits, and creating content for this kind of keyword can really bring us results in a short amount of time.

Hit “Show results,” and you’ll get your low-hanging fruits. 77 keywords in this case.

Pick out the relevant keywords, excluding the ones that are not, and create content targeting them.

It will help you rank pretty easily.

Rank #1 in SERP Through HQ Keyword Research

A solid SaaS keyword research strategy will help you increase traffic, attract qualified leads, higher conversion rates, and more sales.  

By experimenting with these steps, it will be easier for you to create SEO campaigns and content that drive qualified traffic and conversions. 

But before you start expecting any results, understand that there’s much more to SEO than just executing proper keyword research. 

If you need help improving your SaaS SEO strategy, contact our experts at Omnius.

We’ll be glad to help you create a high-performing strategy.

FAQ

How to Do SaaS Keyword Research?

SaaS keyword research involves identifying relevant keywords and phrases related to your software-as-a-service (SaaS) business. Start by brainstorming potential keywords, using keyword research tools to discover new keywords, analyzing competitor keywords, and prioritizing high-intent keywords with adequate search volume and low competition.

How to Do SEO for SaaS Business?

To optimize SEO for a SaaS business, focus on creating high-quality, relevant content that addresses the needs and pain points of your target audience. Optimize website structure, meta titles and meta descriptions, build high-quality backlinks, utilize targeted keywords, and leverage content marketing strategies to improve search engine rankings and drive organic traffic.

What Is SEO and SEM for SaaS?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for SaaS involves optimizing your website and online presence to improve visibility and organic search rankings. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) for SaaS includes paid advertising efforts such as PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns to drive targeted traffic and generate leads for your SaaS business.

Which Software Is Best for Keyword Research?

Several software tools are suitable for keyword research, including Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz Keyword Explorer. These tools offer features such as keyword suggestions, search volume data, competition analysis, and keyword performance tracking to help identify valuable keywords for your SaaS business.