SaaS SEO Glossary
Here’s a comprehensive SaaS SEO Glossary combining essential terms from both SaaS and SEO, organized alphabetically:
A
• A/B Testing: A method of comparing two versions of a web page, email, or product experience to see which performs better.
• Attribution Model: A framework for assigning credit to marketing channels or touchpoints that contribute to conversions.
• Above the Fold: The portion of a web page visible without scrolling. Important for user engagement and SEO.
• Account-Based Marketing (ABM): A strategy focusing on targeted marketing efforts toward specific high-value accounts.
• Activation Rate: The percentage of users who take a specific action to become active users.
• Active Users: Users who engage with a product or service within a given timeframe.
• Amplification: The process of increasing the reach of content through sharing and promotion.
• Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): The predictable revenue a company expects to earn annually from subscriptions.
• Auto-Generated Content: Content created programmatically rather than manually, often used in large-scale SEO strategies.
• Average Deal Size: The average revenue generated per closed deal.
• Average Handle Time: The average duration taken to resolve a customer interaction.
• Average Revenue Per User (ARPU): The average revenue generated per user over a specific period.
• Average Selling Price: The typical price at which a product or service is sold.
B
• B2B SaaS: Business to business Software as a Service company.
• Black Hat SEO: Unethical SEO practices aimed at manipulating search engine rankings, such as keyword stuffing and cloaking.
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page.
• Breadcrumbs: Navigational aids that show users their current location within a website’s hierarchy.
• Burn Rate: The rate at which a company spends its capital before generating positive cash flow.
- • Buyer Persona: A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on data and research.
C
• Canonical Tag: An HTML element that specifies the preferred version of a web page to prevent duplicate content issues.
• Churn Rate: The percentage of customers who stop using a product or service over a given period.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view it.
• Cloaking: A deceptive SEO technique where the content presented to search engines differs from that presented to users.
• Content Curation: The process of gathering, organizing, and sharing relevant content from various sources.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action on a website, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.
• Crawlability: The ease with which search engine bots can access and index a website’s content.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing and sales expenses.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): The total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account throughout their relationship.
• Customer Retention Rate: The percentage of existing customers who remain with a company over a specific period.
• Customer Success: A function in SaaS that focuses on proactive support to help customers realize value and reduce churn.
• Customer Health Score: A predictive measure indicating how likely a customer is to renew or churn based on usage and engagement.
D
• De-Indexed: When a web page or site is removed from a search engine’s index, making it unavailable in search results.
• Domain Authority (DA): A metric developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages.
• Duplicate Content: Blocks of content that appear in more than one location on the internet, which can negatively impact SEO.
- • Daily Active Users (DAU): Number of unique users engaging with a product daily.
• Data-Driven SEO: SEO strategy guided by analytics and performance data rather than assumptions.
• Demand Generation: Marketing activities aimed at creating awareness and interest in a product, usually higher in the funnel.
E
• Editorial Links: Backlinks that are given naturally by other websites without the site owner requesting them.
• Editorial SEO: Is the integration of SEO best practices into content planning and writing to create high-quality, optimized content that aligns with user intent and drives organic growth.
• Evergreen Content: Content that remains relevant and valuable over time, without requiring significant updates.
• External Link: A hyperlink that points to a domain other than the one on which the link exists.
• Engagement Rate: Measures how actively users interact with your product or content.
• Engagement Score: A metric that captures how actively a user is interacting with a SaaS product over time.
• Expansion Revenue: Additional revenue from existing customers via upsells, cross-sells, or upgrades.
F
• Faceted Navigation: A system that allows users to filter and refine search results based on multiple attributes.
• Feature Adoption Rate: The percentage of users who start using a new feature after it’s released.
• Freemium: A business model that offers basic services for free while charging for premium features.
G
• Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): An emerging strategy that focuses on optimizing content and data structures for generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
• Google Analytics: A web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.
• Google Search Console: A free tool from Google that helps website owners monitor and troubleshoot their site’s presence in search results.
• Gross Margin: The difference between revenue and cost of goods sold, expressed as a percentage of revenue.
• Growth Rate: The rate at which a SaaS business increases its MRR, users, or other key metrics.
H
• Header Tags: HTML elements (H1, H2, H3, etc.) used to define headings and subheadings on a webpage, important for SEO and readability.
• Horizontal SaaS: Software as a Service solutions designed to serve a wide range of industries and business types.
• Hreflang Tag: An HTML attribute used to specify the language and regional targeting of a webpage. It helps search engines serve the correct language or regional URL in search results, crucial for international SaaS SEO strategies.
I
• Inbound Marketing: A strategy that focuses on attracting customers through content and interactions that are relevant and helpful, rather than interruptive.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): A form of cloud computing that provides virtualized computing resources over the internet.
• Internal Linking: The practice of linking one page of a website to another page within the same website to improve navigation and SEO.
• ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): A detailed description of the company or user type that gets the most value from your product.
• Integration: Connecting your SaaS with other tools to streamline user experience.
J
• JavaScript (JS): A programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers.
• Journey Mapping: The process of creating a visual representation of the steps a customer goes through when engaging with a company.
• Jobs to Be Done (JTBD): A framework for understanding what motivates users to use your product.
K
• Key Performance Indicator (KPI): A measurable value that indicates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives.
• Keyword: A word or phrase that users enter into search engines, which SEO strategies aim to target.
• Keyword Density: The percentage of times a keyword appears on a page compared to the total number of words.
• Keyword Stuffing: The overuse of keywords on a webpage, which can lead to penalties from search engines.
• K-Factor: A measure of virality, reflecting how many new users each existing user refers.
• Knowledge Base: A self-service help library for customers to solve problems independently.
L
• Landing Page: A standalone web page created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign.
• Lead Generation: The process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into someone who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service.
• Lifetime Value (LTV): The total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account.
• Lagging Indicators: Metrics that show past performance (e.g., MRR, churn).
• Leading Indicators: Metrics that predict future performance (e.g., activation rate, engagement).
• Link Building: The process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own to improve SEO.
• Long-Tail Keywords: Longer and more specific keyword phrases that visitors are more likely to use when they’re closer to making a purchase.
• Lead Scoring: Assigning values to leads based on behavior and likelihood to convert.
• Logo Churn: The number of customers (logos) lost over a period, regardless of revenue impact.
M
• Marketing Automation: The use of software to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation and campaign management.
• Marketplace Optimization: SEO strategies tailored to platforms like G2, Capterra, or App marketplaces to improve visibility and conversions.
• Meta Description: A brief summary of a web page’s content that appears in search engine results.
• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): The predictable revenue that a company expects to earn every month.
• MAU (Monthly Active Users): Number of unique users engaging with the product monthly.
N
• Natural Language Processing (NLP): A branch of artificial intelligence that enables computers to understand and generate human language. NLP is used by search engines to better comprehend the context, sentiment, and intent behind queries and content.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): A metric used to measure customer satisfaction by asking customers how likely they are to recommend a company.
- • Net Revenue Retention (NRR): Revenue retained from existing customers over a period, factoring in churn, upgrades, and downgrades.
• NoFollow Link: A link attribute that tells search engines not to follow the link or pass any link equity to the target page.
O
• On-Page SEO: The practice of optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines.
• Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who open a specific email out of the total number of recipients.
• Organic Traffic: Visitors who come to a website through unpaid search engine results.
• Onboarding: The process of guiding new users to value as quickly and effectively as possible.
P
• Page Authority (PA): A score developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engine result pages.
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC): An online advertising model in which advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their online ads.
• Personalization Engine: A system that tailors content, features, or messaging based on user behavior or attributes.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS): A cloud computing model that provides customers with a platform to develop, run, and manage applications without dealing with the infrastructure.
• Product-Led Growth (PLG): A business methodology where the product itself drives customer acquisition, expansion, and retention.
• PQL (Product-Qualified Lead): A user who has experienced product value and is ready for conversion.
Q
• Qualified Lead: A prospective customer who has been deemed likely to convert based on criteria set by the marketing and sales teams.
• Quality Score: A metric used by search engines that influences the cost and effectiveness of paid search campaigns.
• Quota Attainment: The degree to which sales reps meet or exceed their assigned goals.
R
• Retargeting: An online advertising strategy that targets users who have previously visited a website but did not convert.
• Return on Investment (ROI): A measure used to evaluate the efficiency or profitability of an investment.
• Robots.txt: A file that tells search engine crawlers which pages or sections of a site should not be crawled or indexed.
• Retention Rate: The percentage of users who continue to use your product over a time period.
• Runway: How long a company can operate at its current burn rate before it runs out of cash.
S
• Sales Funnel: The process that companies lead prospects through when purchasing products.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to a website through organic search engine results.
• Seat-Based Pricing: Pricing model where customers pay based on the number of users (seats).
• Segmentation: Dividing users or leads into groups based on shared characteristics for targeted marketing or feature releases.
• Self-Service Onboarding: A model where users can adopt the SaaS product without human assistance, critical in PLG.
• Semantic SEO: An advanced approach to SEO that focuses on the meaning and context behind search queries rather than just matching exact keywords.
• SEO Strategy: Defines top-down how a business is leveraging its competitive advantages to solve its core challenges through SEO. It outlines the differentiated approach the business takes to executing specific SEO tactics to overcome these challenges.
• Software as a Service (SaaS): A software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a service provider and made available to users over the internet.
• Structured Data: Organized data that helps search engines understand the content of a page, often implemented via schema markup.
T
• TAM (Total Addressable Market): The total demand for a product or service available to a business.
• Technical SEO: The aspect of SEO that focuses on improving the technical aspects of a website to increase its ranking in search engines.
• Tools: Are softwares that help analyze, optimize, and track a website’s performance in search engines. They assist with tasks like keyword research, site audits, rank tracking, competitor analysis, backlink monitoring, and content optimization.
• Top of the Funnel (TOFU): The awareness stage of the buyer’s journey where potential customers first learn about a product or service.
• Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate: Percentage of users who convert from free trial to paying customers.
• Time to Value (TTV): The time it takes a customer to realize the product’s value.
• Transactional SEO: Is the practice of optimizing content and pages to target high-intent keywords that signal a user’s readiness to take action such as signing up, purchasing, or requesting a demo.
U
• Unique Selling Proposition (USP): The factor that differentiates a product or service from its competitors.
• User Experience (UX): The overall experience a user has when interacting with a website or application.
• User Interface (UI): The point of interaction between the user and a digital device or product.
• Upsell: Encouraging customers to move to a higher-priced tier or add-ons.
• User Retention: The act of keeping users engaged and subscribed over time.
V
• Viral Marketing: A marketing strategy that encourages individuals to share a marketing message, leading to exponential growth in the message’s visibility.
• Virality Loop: A growth mechanism where current users invite new ones, triggering exponential growth.
• Visitor-to-Lead Conversion Rate: The percentage of website visitors who become leads.
W
• Webinar: An online seminar or presentation conducted over the internet, often used for marketing, training, or educational purposes.
• Weighted Scoring: A scoring method where different attributes (like feature usage, company size) have different impact on lead or customer value.
• White Hat SEO: Ethical SEO practices that comply with search engine guidelines, focusing on providing value to users.
• Widget: A small application or component that can be embedded into a website to provide specific functionality, such as a calculator or a live chat feature.
• Win Rate: The percentage of sales opportunities that end in a closed deal.
• Workflow Automation: Using tools to automate tasks in your SaaS onboarding, marketing, or operations.
X
• XML Sitemap: A file that lists all the pages of a website, helping search engines understand its structure and index it more effectively.
• XML API: Used for data exchange, especially in SaaS integrations.
Y
• Year on Year (YoY): A performance comparison metric that evaluates a specific data point against the same period in the previous year.
• Yield Optimization: The process of maximizing revenue from a product or service, often used in the context of advertising to optimize ad placements and pricing.
Z
• Zero-Day Vulnerability: A software security flaw that is unknown to the software vendor or has not been patched, which hackers can exploit.
• Zero-Click Search: A search result that provides the answer directly on the search engine results page, eliminating the need for users to click through to a website.
• Zero Churn: The ideal state where no customers cancel their subscription in a given period.
• Zone-Based Pricing: Pricing that varies based on region or user location.
