8 SaaS SEO Strategies: How I Helped Drive a 750% User Signup Increase (Case Study)

Some SaaS companies have a foundational SEO content process:

Do tailored keyword research based on customer pain points, product USPs, and search intent relevance
Create quality, optimized content to rank for the keywords you found after doing your keyword research
Rinse and repeat

Simply following the above process consistently allows you to see significant SEO results.

The more content you put out where there are keyword opportunities, the more results you’ll see—an increase in clicks, impressions, and rankings.

But that’s assuming you’re doing the keyword research and content writing process the right way.

If that’s you, you’re probably now at a point where you’re curious about other B2C SaaS SEO strategies to implement to get even more results in terms of organic visibility and conversions.

This case study guide will walk you through the exact strategies I used for a B2C SaaS startup to help them get the following results:

750% increase in user signups
400% increase in revenue growth
350% increase in subscription revenue
500% increase in payments

Alongside “an insane amount of clicks, impressions—tens of millions.”

Long story short, this case study guide will focus on the strategies implemented for my client, Jacob Jacquet, the CEO of Rezi. If you’d like to hear about the process and results from my client himself, watch my interview with him below.

This case study interview was taken on the 12th December 2023

TL;DR: Here’s the list of SaaS SEO strategies we’ll discuss:

Product-led SEO
Capitalize trends and events
Reinforce content clusters
Revamp old blog posts
Internal linking
BOFU content
Competitor gap analysis
User surveys and feedback

Table of Contents

Not yielding any results from search engines?

My particular ideal reader for this case study guide is someone running a B2C software company and is already generating a stream of organic traffic through search engines since they’ve already created well-written SEO articles for some of their key content cluster keywords.

So if you’re in B2C SaaS and are already seeing some traffic via search engines but want to take your SEO results up a notch by implementing different strategies rather than the standard keyword research process of finding high search volume keywords with conversion and ranking potential, this case study guide is for you.

If you’re in a B2C SaaS but can’t relate to any of that since you’ve yielded little to no results through search engines, you’ll benefit far more from implementing the steps discussed in my previous case study guide here, where I walk you through exactly how I helped my client (the same client who I’ll be discussing here) devise a strategy from scratch to boost organic traffic by 468.69% in 4 months and increase his monthly user signups by an average of 30%.

In other words, my previous case study guide is part 1 of growing a B2C SaaS company via search engines—it focuses on building an online presence from the ground up and covers my work with Rezi from the years 2021 up until the start of 2022.

However, this case study guide is part 2 of growing a B2C SaaS company via search engines—it focuses on further increasing organic visibility, signups, and solidifying your online presence—this covers my work with Rezi from 2022 up until the end of 2023.

Now that that’s been clarified, let’s cut to the chase and get straight to some actionable SaaS SEO strategies.

Strategy #1: Product-Led SEO

Creating content for keyword opportunities where the underlying pain point of the search intent is relevant to the core problem you solve is one thing. Developing a product feature to capture search demand is another.

In other words, product-led SEO. Credit to Eli Schwartz, the author of Product-Led SEO, who sums up the strategy nicely:

“Instead of using SEO to market the product, the product should become the SEO driver.”
Eli Schwartz

Besides finding new keywords to create content on, another angle is to develop a new product feature to capture an unmet pain point suggested by search volume and demand.

The Resignation Letter

The Great Resignation was a phenomenon relevant to Rezi.

COVID-19 caused companies to go bankrupt and led to many redundancies. The trend continued even in 2022.

Knowing that the product USP for Rezi was the AI aspect to automate the resume and cover letter creation process, Rezi would be a crucial resource for layoff support to those who have lost their jobs and are in search of new career opportunities.

Besides being made redundant, there were also another group of professionals who resigned from their jobs for various reasons such as low pay and work-life balance, which was becoming an upward trend.

Whether people were being made redundant or having a rude awakening on their life choices, they may want to simply update their resume and cover letter to secure new opportunities. But was there any other way Rezi could help?

Enter the AI Resignation Letter Builder.

The Rezi product team was quick to develop a new feature: AI Resignation Letter Builder. We were also quick to create content relevant to the resignation trend:

This allowed us to essentially create the first AI Resignation Letter Builder, which led to some pretty favorable results.

Traffic Value of Top Resignation Letter Content

Ahrefs traffic value data for resignation letter website content on 31st August 2022

Clicks and Impressions

Clicks and impressions of the “resignation letter examples” article for August to December 2022

Clicks and impressions of the “resignation letter examples” article for August to December 2023

Page 1 Rankings in Less Than 1 Month

Google Search Console results from the last 7 days within 1 month of publishing the “subject lines for resignation email” blog post

Ahrefs data on the blog post for “subject lines for resignation email”

#1 SERP ranking in 1 month

6-month performance of clicks and impressions for “subject lines for resignation email” blog post

Strategy #2: Capitalize Trends and Events

Take advantage of trends, especially when they’re relevant to your product.

The resignation trend is one example of how we saw a product opportunity. Another trend was the public release of ChatGPT-3, which was launched on November 30th, 2022.

Quite simply, ChatGPT blew up.

Knowing that Rezi leverages GPT technology to automate the resume writing process, it would be a waste not to create any type of website or LinkedIn post while the iron is hot to get more eyeballs.

The advantage small teams have against large companies is that small teams can move a lot faster. With that in mind, make it a priority to be one of the first to jump on a trend that’s relevant to your product or service so you can acquire some traffic.

And, of course, if you see any further opportunities like developing a new product feature that solves the underlying pain point of a trend, be the first to create and promote it.

Here are a few pieces of website content created inspired by trends:

Strategy #3: Reinforce Content Clusters

Some of the core topics for Rezi are the resume and the cover letter.

Competitors would love to rank #1 for the keyword “resume builder” or “cover letter builder.” However, there are also other resume and cover letter keywords to rank for.

In part 1 of my case study with Rezi, we had prioritized specifically “ATS resume” keywords because of the product positioning and messaging. The primary USP was that Rezi incorporates AI to automate the writing, editing, formatting, and ATS-optimization process.

Still, there are only so many ATS resume topics to write about. Hence, the next step was to branch out and focus on resume and cover letter topics as a whole.

That said, for the resume cluster, we targeted keywords to do with resume sections because they’re directly related to using an AI Resume Builder. Here are a few examples:

Moreover, we targeted long-tail keywords for writing a cover letter. Here are a few examples:

I select keywords and prioritize them based on the following:

Search volume: determine if enough people would be interested in an article for a particular keyword.
Cost per click (CPC): the higher the cost, the more it means competitors invest in this keyword via paid ads, therefore suggesting that the keyword is bringing results.
Keyword difficulty: check the score provided by your keyword research tool on how likely it is to achieve rankings.
Search intent: assess the SERP to understand how relevant the user search intent is to your product.
Competitor content: evaluate whether you can create the best piece of content for the keyword.

Strategy #4: Revamp Old Blog Posts

Refreshing old blog posts is a strategy that’ll never die out. It’s a strategy I also mentioned in my previous case study.

Here’s my process for revamping old blog posts:

Refine the headline to make it more engaging
Add new sections that are relevant to the search intent
Remove or update sections to ensure the article is fully relevant to the search intent
Improve content readability and format with headers
Cut down the fluff to ensure your writing is concise
Add and remove internal links
Update any external links

Find Underperforming Content

Here are the tools I use for finding underperforming content:

Ahrefs
Google Search Console

In my experience, those pieces of website content sitting in positions 4-25 have the potential to move up in rankings fairly quickly with a bit of optimization and updating.

Besides content sitting in positions 4-25 for their respective keywords, here are other things to look out for:

Content that’s not well-optimized for relevant keywords
Content that’s getting little to no traction on search engines
Keyword cannibalization (in this case, it’s worth merging those pages into one and adding a redirect from the old page to the new one)
Overwhelmingly long pieces of content that could be broken down into another article or more to target relevant long-tail keywords

Ahrefs and Google Search Console are usually enough to dig up data on what pieces of content should be optimized. Another tool worth mentioning is Google Analytics—however, this is mostly to do with improving content and website performance from a conversion perspective as opposed to SEO.

Using Ahrefs to Find Content That Needs to Be Updated

Firstly, click on “organic keywords” to get a list of keywords your website ranks for.

Next, do the following:

Click “Position” and enter from position 4 to position 25
Select “Apply”

Now, select “Show results” to get a list of keywords ranking on the first or second page of Google.

The website content for the list of keywords you’re looking at is already performing decently—some better or worse than others.

Using Google Search Console to Find Content That Needs to Be Updated

I’ll use my own website here as an example.

Firstly, load up Google Search Console and select a date range (I suggest the last 3 months).

Next, select “Average position” as shown in the screenshot below.

Take note of queries sitting between positions 4-25 (SEO is not my primary channel to acquire leads. Hence my stats aren’t as particularly impressive).

After you’ve made note of queries sitting between positions 4-25, click on the “pages” tab to take note of specific pages sitting between positions 4-25.

Strategy #5: Internal Linking

This deserves a step on its own because internal links can make a huge difference in achieving rankings by building topical authority.

Internal links are links from one page to another on your website.

If you’re writing a blog post about cover letters, you might include links to other content that you have on your website such as the following:

Internal links build topical authority by signaling to Google that you have relevant content on the topic you’re writing about, which helps with discoverability so that your content gets found on search engines.

Strategy #6: BOFU Content

Here are the main types of BOFU content that pretty much all companies can create:

Product comparisons
Alternatives listicle
Best product/service listicle
Customer success stories
Sales pages

Content at the bottom of the funnel works so well because you’re getting in front of an audience who are close to making a purchase.

Let’s say there are two types of searchers on the internet who enter different keywords into Google:

“How to write a resume”
“Affordable resume writer”

Which searcher do you think is closer to taking money out of their wallets?

The answer is the latter, “affordable resume writer” and that’s because the intent is stronger.

In other words, BOFU content is more likely to drive conversions. Intent at the bottom of the funnel is either commercial or transactional:

Commercial intent: The visitor is looking for more information regarding their best options before making a purchase, e.g. “best resume builders”
Transactional intent: The visitor is directly looking to make a purchase since they know what they want to get, e.g. “AI resume builder”

And the advantage of BOFU content is that they’re not only more focused on driving conversions, but the keywords are less competitive so they’re easier to rank for.

If you’re ever looking for new pieces of website content to create that are more focused on driving sales or conversions, I would advise you to prioritize content where the intent is at the bottom of the funnel.

Here are some examples:

Strategy #7: Competitor Gap Analysis

Competitors are one place to go for finding new keyword opportunities.

There’s almost a 100% chance that your competitors have website content that you don’t, bringing them traffic that you’re missing out on.

Here are some of the articles I worked on inspired after doing competitor content analysis:

Using Ahrefs for Competitor Keyword Analysis

Step 1: Click on “content gap”
Step 2: Enter the website URLs of your top competitors
Step 3: Select “Show keywords”

Step 4: Filter the keyword difficulty up to 65.

Now, how high you want to filter the keyword difficulty number is entirely up to you—however, it should be relative to the difficulty of keywords you’re already ranking for and the stage your company is at.

Here’s my input on general guidelines when selecting the keyword difficulty:

0-25: You’re a new website getting barely any organic traffic or none at all—you may only just be starting to focus on SEO.
25-45: Your website is ranking for a few keywords already and driving organic traffic somewhat consistently.
45-65: Your website is generating a considerable amount of organic traffic and is ranking for some competitive keywords.
65+: Well shit, you’re probably in the big leagues. You can compete and try to match with the likes of industry leading companies.

In my case, I’ve helped Rezi achieve rankings for keywords with a difficulty score as high as 75-80. So, I reduced this number down to 65 to find some ranking opportunities.

Step 5: Make a list of keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t—take note of them using a spreadsheet.

I use the same process as mentioned earlier on in this guide for selecting and prioritizing competitor keywords:

Search volume: determine if enough people would be interested in an article for a particular keyword.
Cost per click (CPC): the higher the cost, the more it means competitors invest in this keyword via paid ads, therefore suggesting that the keyword is bringing results.
Keyword difficulty: check the score provided by your keyword research tool on how likely it is to achieve rankings.
Search intent: assess the SERP to understand how relevant the user search intent is to your product.
Competitor content: evaluate whether you can create the best piece of content for the keyword.

Strategy #8: User Surveys and Feedback

What better way than to find out what content your audience would love to see than to ask them yourself?

Here’s my process to using user feedback to fuel the content strategy:

Connect the dots by finding recurring themes, goals, or pain points
Brainstorm content ideas based on user feedback
Translate content ideas into potential keywords
Identify keyword opportunities

Sending out user surveys are perfect for informing your SEO content strategy. Once you receive feedback, take note of what users are saying about your product and the type of content they’re interested in.

Even if the search volume is as low as 10 or 20, I would argue that it can still be a priority because it’s what your audience is interested in, therefore, ranking for that “low search volume” term is worth it since it means getting in front of the right audience.

Above all else, your users come first.

How your users look at one topic could be completely different from how you view that same topic. What’s important is getting in front of the right people and communicating through the lens of your target audience.

Here are a few examples of content published where some of the ideas came from users:

4 Ways to Boost User Signups With B2C SaaS Content

I’ve shared a list of B2C SaaS SEO strategies implemented to boost organic visibility. However, it’s also worth noting that there are a few more strategies implemented within the content creation process to drive more user signups:

Call to action buttons
Embed customer reviews
Product copywriting
Product-led storytelling

I’ll discuss each of these in more detail below.

Call to Action Buttons

How will the reader know what you want them to do if you don’t make it clear enough to them?

Writing a direct call to action is one thing. Creating a call to action button is another. The design element of a call-to-action button can make a difference that you shouldn’t underestimate.

Here’s a few examples of how we do it for some of the blog posts at Rezi:

Call to action button example

Call to action button example

Firstly, a good call-to-action button design will stand out and catch the reader’s eye.

Secondly and more importantly, within the few seconds you have the reader’s attention because of the design element, your call-to-action message clarifies how they can take the next step. This ensures your reader knows what to do next. Even if their initial intent isn’t to take action, they’ll at least know how to because you pointed it out to them.

And that’s the purpose of a call to action button: to grab your reader’s attention and make it clear what you want them to do.

Embed Customer Reviews

The most compelling asset you have to drive conversions is the words that come out of the mouths of your customers.

See some examples from Rezi below:

Testimonial at the conclusion of a blog post

Embedding customer reviews within your content makes your call to actions twice as powerful. Another good alternative is to display credible companies you’ve worked with to help establish yourself as an authority.

Company logos in a blog post

Here’s where I would suggest embedding customer reviews:

With call to actions
Product copywriting and storytelling sections
Introductions and conclusions

Product Copywriting

Think of product copywriting as writing product descriptions. The intended purpose is to sell by making your product or service appear desirable to your audience.

Product copywriting can work effectively as a means to directly sell your product to the reader.

I know, the typical advice is to not sell your product or service in a blog post. My only argument against that is that it depends on the search intent because some website visitors are already willing to buy except they’re unaware which solution is best for them.

And if you know you have the ideal solution for the particular problem they’re trying to solve, why not mention it and describe why it would be ideal for them? Wouldn’t hiding your product or service away from them be more selfish?

Now, there is a right and wrong way of doing this. The right way is to highlight your product features naturally. The wrong way is to jam your product down your reader’s throat.

When you recommend a product or service to your friend, you wouldn’t usually bring it up unless you’re talking about something that’s highly relevant. If you bring up a product or service that you suggest out of nowhere, well, it’s quite random and not likely for your friend to look into it since it’s not relevant nor a priority—approach product copywriting with the same mindset.

All that being said, don’t expect this to drive immediate conversions for every single reader. But what it does at the very least is raise product awareness.

Here are a few examples below:

Product copywriting in a blog post example

Product copywriting in a blog post example

Product-Led Storytelling

Product-led storytelling means educating your audience on how your product works to solve the underlying problem and pain point behind the search intent.

Now, I imagine you’re wondering about the difference between product copywriting and storytelling.

Allow me to clarify:

Product Copywriting: Directly selling your product or service by highlighting the pain points you solve and the benefits you have to offer.
Product-Led Storytelling: Educating your audience on how your product or service works in solving a particular problem.

The main intention behind product-led storytelling is to essentially teach your audience about the use case for your product or service in solving a certain problem.

Here’s an example below:

Product storytelling in a blog post example

Clicks and Impressions From the Years 2022-2023

Rezi has come a long way, but the more exciting thing to know is that there are still lots of things to work on and plenty of room for growth.

Still, I’ll pull the curtains back and share the yearly numbers in terms of clicks and impressions for 2022 and 2023.

2022: Total Clicks and Impressions

Google Search Console: January to December 2022

2023: Total Clicks and Impressions

Google Search Console: January to December 2023

Organic Growth Highlights

There are certain businesses and industries that will benefit the most and more than others from SEO—B2C SaaS is one of them.

An excerpt of my case study interview on the 12th December 2023 with Jacob Jacquet, the CEO of Rezi, highlighting the results gained with SEO content

As a reminder, the SaaS SEO strategies discussed in this guide have helped Rezi see the following results:

750% increase in user signups
400% increase in revenue growth
350% increase in subscription revenue
500% increase in payments

Now, there are a few more highlights worth mentioning which I’ll share below.

Spikes in Traffic and Revenue

Here are some examples of spikes in growth that Rezi experienced:

109.2% increase in new customers in 1 month
155.8% increase in the number of new customers
$1,000,000 ARR in March 2023
Reached 1,000,000 users in July 2023
55,376 new user signups within 1 day

Ahrefs: Organic Traffic Data for the Year 2023

The organic traffic comparison from the 1st of Jan to the 3rd of Oct (when the numbers peaked, according to Ahrefs) reveals a 519.43% increase.

Ahrefs Screenshot: Rezi organic traffic and keyword rankings data for the 1st of January, 2023

Ahrefs Screenshot: Rezi organic traffic and keyword rankings data for the 3rd of October

Google Analytics: Data on User Signups and Acquisition

Organic search is the main acquisition channel. You can see the progress made over the years via the screenshots from Google Analytics below.

User signups from Jan 1st 2022 to December 31st 2022

User signups from Jan 1st 2023 to December 4th 2023

User acquisition data for organic search from Jan 1st 2022, to December 31st 2022

User acquisition data for organic search from Jan 1st 2023 to December 4th 2023

Summary

Here’s a summary of all the SaaS SEO strategies discussed in this case study article:

Product-led SEO
Capitalize trends and events
Reinforce content clusters
Revamp old blog posts
Internal linking
BOFU content
Competitor gap analysis
User surveys and feedback

While SEO is one factor in helping Rezi grow, there are multiple other factors to take into account when it comes to running a business—having a great product is one of the most important factors of all.

Side Note: If you happen to be interested in Jacob’s story of growing Rezi from the ground up (spoiler alert: SEO is a key channel), you can read a bit more about his story here.

And who’s not to say there’s going to be a case study guide part 3?

The next step now is focusing on scaling content operations and repeating the same strategies, or adding a few more into the mix. If you’d like to follow the journey or hear more about what I’m up to, you can follow me on LinkedIn.

Want to Be My Next Case Study?

I’m on the lookout to make more case studies. If you’re interested in hiring a content strategist or copywriter to work on your website content to drive growth through search engines, I’d love to have a chat to see if we’d be a good fit.

Please get in touch with me at astley@minimalist-copy.com.

P.S. I’m also open to working on an ad hoc basis!

P.P.S. If you’re feeling hesitant and on the fence, here’s a quick message for you:

Minimalist Copy