21 Questions to validate SEO for SaaS

SEO for SaaS Companies

In the SaaS industry, growth is often driven by various channels layered on top of one another. SEO plays a critical role as an acquisition lever, providing a sustainable, cost-effective path for attracting high-intent traffic, generating leads, and supporting long-term revenue growth.

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For SaaS businesses, a well-developed SEO strategy aligns closely with the broader Go-To-Market (GTM) approach, positioning SEO as a core driver of scalable, repeatable growth.

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How SaaS SEO benefits growth:

• - Scalable growth engine
• - Supports the full SaaS buyer journey
• - Builds brand authority and trust
• - Complementary growth lever
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How to Validate SEO as a Channel for SaaS Growth

The process of validating SEO as a channel can be a difficult task for SaaS businesses, as no two SaaS products are the same. What worked for one SaaS probably won’t for another, SaaS companies fall into this trap of trying to copy competitors or adjacent businesses’ strategies, failing to consider their bigger picture.

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The majority of SEO strategies are developed after identifying customer pain points and search volume in the topics around them. This approach fails to consider the business model, product, competitive advantages, resources, and how SEO will address the core business challenges.

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This bottom-up approach to SEO leaves SaaS companies wondering why SEO hasn’t impacted their Go-To-Market goals or generated any revenue like they promised investors.

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Ask yourself the following questions to validate that SEO can be a predictable, scalable, and defensible revenue generation channel for your SaaS, and to gain the context required to develop a top-down SEO strategy for SaaS. 

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Product & Revenue

• What’s our brand’s purpose? What’s our offering?
• What features/functionality does the product have?
• Is the product solving our users' problems?
• Is the product seeing usage from adjacent use cases?
• What other products do we integrate with?
• How are our retention, monetization, and activation rates?
• What channel and user profiles currently drive the most revenue?

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Business Model & Growth Motions

• What’s our business model? Current growth motions? Pricing model?
• How’s our data/reporting infrastructure?
• How has our product grown to this point?

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Customer Pain Points & Market

• What industries/verticals are we pursuing?
• Are we competing in a new or established market?
• How do our users find us? Where does our ICP go to solve their problems?
• Is the problem we solve unique?

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Competitive Advantages & Resources

• What are our competitive advantages?
• What are our competitors doing and not doing?
• Do we have the resources  (budget, time, buy-in, team, knowledge) to implement SEO effectively?

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Search Environment & SEO Levers

• What topics are relevant to our users' problems? Overall search volume?
• What’s our conversion rate from the website? Who are the users converting?
• What type and how can we create content? (Editorial, UGC, Programmatic SEO, Product-led SEO?)

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Final questions

Do we have the resources, opportunity, internal buy-in, and competitive advantages to develop and execute a differentiated SEO strategy?

Do we believe SEO could be an impactful channel - contributing 20%+ of revenue?

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Is SEO Worth It?

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Validating SEO as a viable channel involves assessing how well it aligns with the business model, product, and core challenges. By asking targeted questions about SEO’s potential impact on business objectives, SaaS companies can determine if SEO is worth it for them to drive predictable, scalable growth.

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