Do you know Google did two major core and spam updates to its ranking algorithm in March 2024? 

They also improved their ‘Helpful Content System’ launched in Aug 2022. 

If this was not enough, they also added generative AI capabilities in search in May 2024. 

If you are not sure what they mean, chances are that you have not implemented the latest on-page optimization tactics on your SaaS website based on these major Google updates.

This article will teach you the most effective SaaS On-Page optimization best practices that will work in 2024. 

Why Should I Upgrade My SaaS On-Page SEO Strategy in 2024? 

Google Search’s core ranking systems are always updating, and it is crucial for search engine optimizers and SaaS business owners to keep track of these changes and apply them proactively to their websites. 

Here is why you should upgrade your On-Page SEO strategy to boost the performance of your SaaS website:

• Optimize Your Website For Helpful Content Systems: Upgrading your SaaS website’s On-Page will help you to present helpful, reliable, and people-first content to your target audience.
• Provide a Great Page Experience: You can optimize your site for a rewarding page experience, focusing on Core Web Vitals optimization, responsive design, and a mobile-first approach. 
• Prepare Your Brand For Google’s Search Generative Experience: With the help of the Multitask Unified Model (MUM), which is 1000X more powerful than BERT, Google can now generate answers for complex queries by processing information faster. By optimizing for these generative new-age AI search models, you can readily defeat your competitors. 
• Enhance Brand Awareness and Escalate Your Sales: The SaaS use journey is long. You need a carefully crafted SEO strategy to reach buyers at each crucial buyer journey phase, from awareness to acquisition to retention. Upgrading your SaaS SEO inbound marketing plan helps you reach and engage buyers with well-written and original content pieces that educate and nurture customers. 

Top SaaS On-Page SEO Tactics You Can’t Miss to Follow in 2024 

Here are the finest On-page optimization tactics for enterprise SaaS websites:

Perform Intent-Driven Keyword Research Based on ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

Most SaaS companies fail because they do not know what users want. They just prepare a list of keywords based on search volume and wait for conversions to happen automatically. 

However, this is not the right keyword research strategy for SaaS companies.

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You should know what users want at each phase of the SaaS customer journey and prioritize keywords based on ICP, user intent, and competition. 

Build your ideal SaaS customer profile using this guide to understand potential buyers’ needs.

Based on your ICP, research the best keywords for your business that can drive awareness, new signups, and conversions to paying customers. 

Keywords should be categorized as follows:

Awareness Phase (Informational Keywords)

Customers are seeking information and trying to understand their problems. 

Informational: 

• What is [SaaS Product Type] 
• Benefits of [SaaS Product Type] 
• How [SaaS Product Type] works 
• [SaaS Product Type] vs [Competitor Type] 
• Trends in [Industry]

Consideration Phase (Informational & Commercial Keywords) 

Customers are evaluating different solutions to their problems. 

Informational: 

• Best [SaaS Product Type] for [Specific Use Case] 
• [SaaS Product Type] reviews 
• [SaaS Product Type] comparison 
• [SaaS Product Type] case studies 
• How to choose [SaaS Product Type] 

Commercial: 

• Top [SaaS Product Type] software 
• [SaaS Product Type] software pricing 
• Affordable [SaaS Product Type] solutions 
• Best [SaaS Product Type] for small business 
• [SaaS Product Type] with the best customer support 

Decision Phase (Commercial & Transactional Keywords) 

Customers are ready to make a purchase decision and seek specific details to finalize their choice. 

Commercial: 

• [SaaS Product Name] pricing 
• [SaaS Product Name] demo 
• [SaaS Product Name] features 
• [SaaS Product Name] alternatives 

Transactional: 

• Buy [SaaS Product Name] 
• [SaaS Product Name] free trial 
• [SaaS Product Name] sign up
• [SaaS Product Name] discount 
• [SaaS Product Name] promo code 

Retention Phase (Navigational Keywords) 

Customers have purchased the product and are seeking support, resources, and ways to maximize its use. 

Navigational: 

• [SaaS Product Name] login 
• [SaaS Product Name] support 
• [SaaS Product Name] tutorials 
• [SaaS Product Name] customer service 
• [SaaS Product Name] documentation 

You should find these keywords using several keyword research tools and your CRM data. 

Also, don’t forget to share the keyword impressions/clicks/conversions data from your PPC team for the last three months. This will help you prepare a full list of high-value SaaS keywords to bring in new customers and improve your MRR and ARR. 

Adopt A Mobile-First Design Strategy

Mobile-first indexing is the term for the way Google uses the mobile version of a site’s content, crawled with the Googlebot-Mobile agent, for indexing and ranking purposes. 

Therefore, you should check for SaaS websites on responsive design checkers like BrowserStack to ensure your site offers an exceptional and faster browsing experience on multiple iOS and Android devices. 

Your site should adopt a mobile-first design strategy, with UX-friendly navigation, content displayed above the fold, faster page load times, and finger-friendly touchpoints.

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Avoid designing small touch CTAs as they are hard to click and decrease the Core Web Vitals score.  

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Read this guide to prepare smartphone-friendly sites so that Google can access, understand, and render the content on your website. 

Since most users nowadays conduct mobile searches, it will be challenging for your SaaS brand to reach and convert users without a mobile-first content strategy. 

Create Helpful, Reliable, People-First, and EEAT-Friendly Content

Content is the major part of your SaaS On-Page SEO strategy. 

Your SaaS content writing team should produce content that is well-researched and helpful.

When accessing your content quality, you should check these points:

• Is your content original with data-backed reporting, research, or analysis? 
• Does the content provide a complete description of the topic? 
• Is your content 10X offering something unique that no one else offers?
• Are your page titles, descriptions, and headings unique, well-written, descriptive, and user-friendly?
• Is your content accurate without grammatical and factual errors?
• Is this content written or reviewed by a SaaS expert with experience in your publishing topic?
• Does the author have first-hand expertise and extensive knowledge on the subject?
• Does the content have proper meta tags, headings, and a logical structure? 

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• Does the content have a short and descriptive URL?
• Is the content shareworthy?
• Does the website have complete contact information?
• Would you expect to see your content referenced by other websites, media houses, magazines, and encyclopedias?
• Does the content have complete author information that showcases his first-hand experience?

Upgrade Your Content’s Page Experience

Page Experience is an important On-page SEO factor that should not be ignored. Most business owners are most concerned about content and think offering users a great page experience is secondary. 

Find out whether your SaaS website is good for users by answering these questions: 

• Are your web pages optimized for Core Web Vitals performance?
• Does your site have HTTPS?
• Is your site content full of ads?
• For easier readability, does your page have proper subheadings, numbers, and bullet points?
• Does your page have annoying interstitials and dialogs?

You can also log in to your Search Console and navigate to the Page Experience section to identify any issues.

The Page Experience report consists of two main parts: the Core Web Vitals and HTTPS.

The Core Web Vitals report shows the page URLs that are poor and should be improved to offer a great UX. The report is shown for both mobile and desktop. 

You should carefully look at this report and fix the Core Web Vitals issues impacting your website. Some major issues that often cause poor scores are LCP, ICP, FID, and CLS. 

This quick guide from Google will help you learn more about these issues and how to fix them.

You should also see the HTTPs report to identify pages that are non-HTTPS:

Fixing Page Experience issues is challenging, and you should consult your web development team to review the UX bottlenecks carefully.

By offering a good user experience, you can drastically improve your organic rankings for your target keywords.

Enable Users to Dive Deeper on the Topics They Care About With Generative AI

Former Google VP Amit Singhal has always discussed the possibility of Google becoming an answer engine similar to Star Trek. The idea was progressing back in 2015, and in 2024, with generative AI search, Google achieved a milestone in this regard. 

With the help of this technology, Google can unlock entirely new types of questions you never thought of and answer them.

Users will still click on website links displayed in the generative AI box for deeper research, so that’s an opportunity to explore. 

For example, for a query like “how can a CRM help my business?” Google returns a carousel of website links at the bottom of the AI-generated answer. 

Getting your website placed here will raise your chances of acquiring potential clicks.

Ideally, you should aim to get your site ranked in the Gen AI carousel and also the Google SERP for maximum visibility and organic traffic.

Increase Sitewide Authority Relevance For Your SaaS Niche

The recent Google content leak sparked debates that the search engine giant uses a factor similar to site authority to rank web documents. The anonymous call was made to Rand Fishkin of SparkToro.

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Considering the latest Google Doc leak, improving your sitewide authority on your niche subject is a good practice for higher dominance in the organic search results.

To increase sitewide authority in your niche, you should create content clusters around topics your audience cares about. Avoid picking random topics or irrelevant blogs that do not correspond to your primary service. 

Also, acquire many high-authority brand mentions (citations) and backlinks from pages that rank higher organically. 

Everything should be niche-specific (content + links + citations). By having a higher sitewide authority on the subject, you can hold an upper hand over other competitors and enjoy a higher organic market share. 

Apply the SEO Internal Linking Best Practices

Internal links are one of the most overlooked aspects of a smart search engine optimization strategy. 

An internal link is when you link to a page on your website from another page using contextually relevant anchor text.

The ideal link structure for your SaaS website should be similar to the figure below. You should interlink subject-wide links together (pillar content should link to content clusters), and there should be no orphan pages. 

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Follow these best practices for internal linking for maximum SEO benefits:

• Link to the important product and pricing pages from the main navigation.
• Add links to guides, feature pages, blogs, and trending posts from the footer.
• Link cluster content from pillar content pages to increase relevance and page authority for the entire content hub.
• Place contextual links in blog pages and guides.
• Every page on your site should be no more than three clicks away. 
• Use natural anchor texts to link to important pages on your site.
• Don’t add too many internal links. The best practice is to keep it below 100 (Matt Cutts said this in 2009). The ideal number depends on your common sense. You can look at this English Google SEO office-hours video from July 2, 2021, in which John Mueller discusses the number of hyperlinks you should have on a page. 
• Update your internal links regularly to fix broken links.

Identify and Fix Content Decay

Google values fresh content and ranks it higher in the search results. 

The web is constantly updating, and you should research the latest trends impacting your subject to provide current information to your target audience.

Most SaaS organizations use their content marketing budget to create new content. However, not all companies assign a budget to update their existing content.

Imagine a piece of content written in 2012. Would it still be useful for your audience in 2024 unless you update it with the latest information? Of course not. Hence, content updation is necessary.

Content decay is a reality, and most SaaS sites face this issue and lose a chunk of their traffic to it. Here is a look at how content decay might impact organic traffic on your site, leading to a drastic loss in traffic. 

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Every content goes through four stages:

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• Early Traction: Once you publish new content, it receives early traction. 
• Growth: After the content acquires internal and external links, it grows.
• Peak: Over time, it continues to acquire more links and reaches its peak.
• Decay: After several months of the content being written, it gradually starts to decline in organic traffic, and finally, traffic starts dipping further, leading to content decay. Over time, the page loses most of its traffic and decreases its original rank in the organic search results.

Hence, you should always update every page of your content to keep it fresh, unique, and full of current and data-backed information. This will allow you to acquire new traffic and keep your existing traffic stable. 

Use Psychological Hacks For SaaS Pricing Pages

Every SEO strategy should lead to conversions. Therefore, whatever organic traffic you acquire should lead to B2B SaaS leads.

One of the top ways to acquire more sales-qualified leads is to apply psychological hacks to your SaaS pricing pages.

For example, dropshipping app, spocket leverages the Bandwagon effect to persuade users to subscribe to their most popular package.  

Similarly, Mailchimp capitalizes on the power of price anchoring to persuade users to try their standard plan.

Upgrade Your SaaS SEO Strategy With Clickstrike 

Having a perfect, user-focused SaaS On-Page SEO strategy benefits software and tech companies and helps them drive more sales-led leads.

Clickstrike is a leading SaaS SEO service that helps you scale your organic marketing efforts and drive more qualified signups. 

We have an in-house team of SEO marketers with expertise in technical audits, website content optimization, content writing, and copywriting. Our team leverages proven, growth-driven search engine optimization tactics to boost your SEO KPIs. 

Contact our qualified SaaS SEO specialists to hit your MRR targets.