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Modern businesses are becoming more and more competitive. To beat your competition, you have to find a way to stand out. Often, standing out in today’s market means having a solid online presence. Data says that around 68% of all website traffic starts with a simple search query. A large chunk of these queries are SaaS buyers looking for a product or service online.
If you can’t put your business in front of these online prospects, you’re as good as invisible.
A reputable SaaS SEO agency can help you do it. However, hiring an agency without performing due diligence can do more harm than good to your business. Always remember to thoroughly vet anyone you decide to bring on board to check who will actually help you, and who’s doing it just for a cash grab.
In this blog, I’ll walk you through some key questions you should ask an SEO agency before you sign them up. These questions will help you avoid trusting the wrong agency and instead pick a partner that provides real results.
When a SaaS SEO agency does its job right, you’ll be able to see more clicks, impressions, and rankings of your website over time. In fact, a recent survey found that about 81% marketers say that SEO gives higher-quality leads than paid ads. It means that a good agency can cut down your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and fill your sales pipeline better than any ad campaign can.
Selecting an SEO partner for your business is akin to choosing your co-pilot for a long and arduous journey. SaaS sales cycles can be long and challenging; so, you need someone who can navigate those challenges and improve key metrics (e.g., pipeline size, sales qualified leads, and customer lifetime value) for you.
Many SaaS startups, especially those in early stages of growth, don’t have deep SEO skills or the ability to build and manage in-house SEO teams. In such cases, bringing in experts can jump-start growth, but only if they truly understand SaaS. A bad fit might create generic content and links that don’t convert.
With the right fit, your SEO spend is an investment in long-term traffic and leads instead of wasted money. In short, knowing how to choose a SaaS SEO agency up front will save money and help your startup scale.
Making a decision about which agency to hire for your SEO needs can be challenging. So many agencies, each with its own specialization and strengths. I’ve compiled a list of questions you should ask an agency while vetting them. These questions will tell you what to look for and make the question of ‘how to choose a saas SEO agency’ a bit less daunting.
Look for agencies that have had success with SaaS businesses like yours in the past. Ask them for specific details about their experience, including industries served, and the scope and duration of their campaigns. Settling for a generic SEO agency that doesn’t have this experience means you might not be able to see the growth you want from your campaign.
Always know what you’ll be paying for. Some agencies will write content themselves, while others might expect you to supply content while they take care of technical optimization. So, ask what services they’ll be providing and what they expect from you.
Generally, an agency offering a complete SEO package will provide every service, ranging from content marketing, link-building, and technical fixes to on-page optimization.
If you are comfortable handling some tasks on your own, then choosing an agency that offers specific services, rather than all, might be a good option. However, if you want to keep your hands free to focus on core operations, opt for an agency that offers a comprehensive package.
Understand how their team works behind the scenes. Ascertain whether you’ll get a dedicated project manager or simply rotating account managers. Make sure that you don’t just talk things out with a junior salesperson, but get in touch with the people who’ll actually be working on your project.
Having such clarity in the initial stages prevents confusion and frustration in the future when you don’t know who to consult for an issue.
See whether the agency has a standard process of operation in place, or whether they’ll just be shooting arrows in the dark. A competent agency would usually start your project by getting information about your business, goals, industry, and ideal customers. They’ll then follow it up with a pre-audit and progress towards the next stages: keyword research, on-page optimization, content creation, building backlinks, and technical fixes.
If your agency doesn’t adhere to a standard process, you risk botching your campaign and not having a clear roadmap of where you are and where you want to go.
Plus, stay away from agencies that you think employ shady or black hat SEO techniques, such as cloaking or buying backlinks. These tactics might give you lucrative gains in the short term, but the penalties slapped by search engines for using them will hurt much more than the temporary incentive.
To make your SEO campaign a success, you’ll need the help of various professional tools. A good SaaS SEO agency will always offer industry-standard tools for keyword research, audits, technical SEO, and performance tracking in their campaign.
Tools like AHrefs, SEMrush, and Moz help in the technical aspect, while analytics platforms track traffic, trial sign-ups, and pipeline growth. The range and quality of the toolset an agency uses will directly impact your SaaS metrics and the success of your project.
If any SEO agency says that they’ll provide results in less than 3-6 months, hang up the phone. SEO takes time and should be treated as a marathon. Those who treat it as a sprint tend to fizzle out before they reach the finish line. If you don’t want to meet the same fate, don’t hire an agency that sells you dreams that can’t come true.
Traffic alone isn’t enough to judge the success of a campaign. You need to ensure that your agency measures KPIs tied to your revenue, such as demo requests, free trial sign-ups, MQLs, SQLs, and CAC impact.
A SaaS SEO agency should also track pipeline contribution and customer lifetime value influenced by SEO. It ensures that every effort they make is connected to your bottom line and doesn’t give you pointless growth.
The past work of an SEO agency can reveal a lot about the style and effectiveness of their strategies. If they’ve worked with big brands and other companies in your industry and were able to deliver tangible results, then they might be a good fit for you, too.
If you want to go one step ahead, contact the marketing heads of the companies they say they’ve worked with and ask if they can vouch for the agency. You’ll get your answer.
Different agencies have different fee structures. Some may charge project or performance-based fees, while others may demand a monthly retainer. Clarify what those fees will get you in terms of the range of services provided, and compare fees against potential ROI from those services.
Knowing what you’re paying for and the time you’ll be making the payment gives you much-needed clarity about your campaign and helps you avoid surprises later.
When hiring an SEO company, you need to make sure you have a dedicated point of contact to communicate with. Also, decide the frequency of communication, meetings, and the mode of these meetings. This is especially important if you want to maintain some degree of control over your project even after outsourcing it.
I’ll tell you a fun fact: SaaS companies often see around a ridiculous 700% return on their investment in SEO, breaking even in just a few months. I bet that got you excited. SEO does take time, but the pay-off when done right justifies every penny spent on it.
Hiring a SaaS SEO agency that’s a good fit for your business and is committed to delivering results can be the key to propelling your business further in the digital marketplace. By focusing on the aforementioned questions, you not only ensure that the agency understands your SaaS business but also track the right KPIs, use the best strategies, and manage your budget effectively.
A SaaS SEO agency is a team that makes it easier for users to find SaaS websites on search engines. By churning out SEO-rich content, improving site structure, performing technical fixes, and earning quality backlinks, they promote a website so that search engines rank it higher. This way, they enable more and more customers to find your products and services online.
What’s special about them is that they know the world of SaaS inside out; it’s their forte. So, while general SEO agencies might not be able to keep up when you focus on things like CAC, churn, and freemium models, agencies that specialize in SaaS will understand you.
As a SaaS startup, if you’ve found the right product-market fit and are perfectly clear about your ICP, then perhaps it’s time to consider hiring an agency to promote your business. It goes without saying that if you already have a decent website but your growth still feels flat, it’s definitely time to call in the experts. Plus, even if you're looking for a more cost-effective alternative to paid ads, SEO is the way to go.
SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Seeing tangible results from SaaS SEO can take at least 3-6 months of consistent efforts. You’ll need an additional 9-12 months before your SEO campaign becomes a serious growth channel.
Early on, you’ll see improvement in ranking for niche keywords and fixed issues on your website. As the campaign progresses, more wins, such as high-quality content, authoritative backlinks, increased sign-ups, trials, demos, and ultimately, higher revenue, will begin to show.
A good SEO plan is one that supports your SaaS business in every stage of the journey. A solid proposal should outline details about your business, its needs and goals, and your ideal customers. Then, it should have a keyword strategy spanning across the marketing funnel (TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU), a technical SEO audit that unearths every possible issue on your website, and a content roadmap. Finally, the SEO plan should tie clear KPIS to your revenue, and not just rankings, so that you can see the volume of actual growth your SEO is bringing.
On top of the questions to ask a SaaS SEO agency, be wary of the red flags an agency might exhibit. Watch out for guaranteed #1 rankings, unclear pricing, or vague answers about reporting. If they can’t explain how their work connects to your pipeline metrics (MQLs, SQLs, CLV), that’s a red flag. Also, if they use jargon without explaining it in plain terms, they may not be the right partner. The best agencies will be transparent, focus on long-term gains, and showcase SaaS-specific case studies rather than generic wins.
