Your Complete Guide to SaaS Keyword Research

Keyword analysis for SaaS brands can seem like a complicated process.

Unless you have experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it’s not easy to define exactly which keywords are going to generate the best results for your campaigns. To run an effective promotional campaign, you first need to have the right keywords.

While there are many different factors involved in making a piece of content “search friendly”, keywords are the key to ensuring the right leads and prospects see your marketing messages. Remember, 68% of online experiences begin with someone entering a keyword into a search box.

In order to effectively reach, engage, and convert your target audience, you need to figure out which terms they’re searching for. Then find ways to effectively embed those terms into the right pieces of content within the marketing funnel. Here’s everything you need to know about keyword analysis for SaaS brands.

What is SaaS Keyword Research?

Keyword research, or “keyword analysis” is one of the first stages in any successful SEO campaign. It’s finding the exact search terms your target audience uses across their buying cycle, then mapping those terms to pages you can rank with and convert on. The best SaaS websites in the world achieve their positions at the top of the search engine results pages (SERP), because they know which keywords to use to connect with customers.

Keyword research involves not only coming up with ideas for what kinds of terms and phrases should be included in a sales, marketing, and branding campaign, but also evaluating the potential of each term. Some keywords will be more valuable to your business than others.

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How SaaS Keyword Research Differs

SaaS adds a few twists compared with keyword research for other industries. Buyers often search in teams, weigh migration risk, and ask integration-first questions. That means your keyword research has to cover product features, use cases, industries, and the ecosystem you connect to.

• Role- and job-based queries. Admins search for setup, security, SSO, and permissions. End users search for workflows and speed. Executives search for ROI and reporting. Your keyword set should reflect all three viewpoints.
• “Switch” moments. Many high-intent searches signal a move away from a current tool. For example, “migrate from Excel to CRM.”
• Integration-first research. Buyers anchor on the stack they already use.
• Comparison and validation. Bottom of funnel traffic clusters around “best,” “vs,” “alternatives,” “pricing,” and “reviews.” These need specific page types and clear tables, not just a blog post.
• Compliance and risk cues. Searches often include terms like SOC 2, HIPAA, data residency, SLAs, and uptime. They reflect objections you’ll face in sales and belong in the research and the content.

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The Benefits of Keyword Analysis for SaaS Brands

Ultimately, keyword analysis for SaaS is one of the most important ways of making sure you’re producing the right content for your website pages, blog posts, and content marketing strategies. With an effective analysis, you can define and implement the right strategy for connecting with your target audience at every stage in the purchasing cycle.

Effective SaaS keyword research ensures companies can:

• Leverage data to understand the needs and desires of their audience
• Ensure their on-page SEO strategy is driven by real insights
• Identify topics to write about for content marketing campaigns
• Boost visibility within the search engine results pages
• Connect with customers at different points within the buyer journey

Good keyword research also helps to ensure you can separate yourself from your competition, and ensure you’re collecting the right number of leads and prospects for your brand.

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What to Do Before Beginning Keyword Analysis

Keyword analysis for SaaS companies, just like keyword analysis for any other brand, starts with careful preparation. Perhaps the most significant part of your keyword research involves simply collecting data which helps you to understand your customer’s journey, and how you should be positioning yourself to attract, retain, and convert leads.

There are several resources you can use to collect data for a keyword analysis, including:

• Competitor analysis: One of the easiest ways to determine what kind of keywords you should be targeting, is to look at your competitors. The chances are they’ll be targeting customers similar to you, so their keywords are likely to be relevant to your audience. You can also use your competitor analysis to spot “keyword gaps” for content your competitors might be missing. This can help you to reach specific, niche customers.
• Customer analysis: Every keyword research strategy should be inspired by your understanding of your target audience. If you don’t already have user personas and guidelines in place to assist with your lead generation strategy, now’s the time to make them. Learn as much as you can about your customer’s demographics, behaviors, and pain points.
• Reviews and testimonials: Reviews, testimonials, and other forms of feedback from your customers can be excellent for extracting keyword insights. You can read what your customers are saying about your brand to learn more about their top concerns, what they love most about your company, and any questions they might have.
• Market analysis: Market research can also be very useful if you’re starting an analysis for SaaS marketing. Insights and reports from market leaders can help you to learn more about the trends in your industry, and the topics your customers might be interested in.
• Top search pages: Researching specific keywords related to your brand, such as “SaaS” or “software” can help you to see what kinds of pages are getting the most attention. This could give you the inspiration you need to plan some great inbound marketing strategies.
• Biggest services/products: Knowing which of your products or services attract the most attention is also a good idea if you’re looking to boost your keyword research. You can use this information to determine what kind of solutions your customers are likely to be looking for when they’re researching your brand.

Remember to consider the importance of search intent when gathering your data too. The best B2B keywords in the SaaS industry are related to a specific requirement or need during the purchasing cycle.

For instance, a simple term like “SaaS” might have more traffic than something like “account-based marketing software for sale”. However, the second long-tail keyword is more likely to target actively engaged buyers, looking to purchase something.

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How to Conduct a Keyword Analysis for SaaS Brands

Once you’ve gathered as much data as possible for your SaaS SEO strategy, you can begin working on creating your list of keywords. Keep in mind, this can be quite a time consuming process, as it requires significant ongoing research and creativity. Here are some of the steps you’ll need to take.

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Step 1: Begin Brainstorming

During the brainstorming stage, you don’t necessarily need to come up with refined, carefully-chosen key phrases. Instead, the focus should be getting as many relevant ideas down on paper as possible.

Begin with a “seed” list related to your niche. Seed keywords are broad terms related to your target audience, niche, or service. They’re broad, generalized terms which can inspire other long-form and specific phrases for your future campaign. For instance, some seed keyword ideas for a company offering accounting software might include the following:

• Finance
• Accounting
• Software
• Invoicing
• Bookkeeping

The best way to create a seed keyword list is to describe your SaaS brand, product, or solution in the simplest way possible. Try to get into the mind of your target audience, and think about how users will search for your items online. Your seed keywords can include the names of your products or services, or the specific products or services you offer. It may also include:

• Locations where you serve customers
• Industry or sector terms
• Integrations with leading tools (Specific to SaaS)
• Competitors

Keep in mind that when brainstorming, it’s important to cast your net as wide as possible. While there may be some keywords that you aren’t in love with, they can help you build a content queue down the road. When you are not as picky about your keywords, you increase the chances of ranking for something, even if it’s not your perfect keyword.

As you pick up momentum and start ranking for terms related to your industry, Google will see you as an authority and increase your chances of ranking for the keywords you really want to rank for.

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Step 2: Build on Your Seed Words with Relevant Keywords

Once you have a lengthy list of seed terms, you can begin to build on your keyword analysis for SaaS marketing by expanding them into more relevant terms. Here, you’ll be focusing on generating specific terms and phrases related to your seed terms.

To expand on your seed keyword list, start by focusing on search intent. For instance, in the case of the accounting SaaS company, here are some keywords you could build from the word “accounting”:

• What is accounting
• Accounting vs. bookkeeping
• Accounting software
• What is accounting software
• Top accounting tools
• Accounting software features
• The best accounting software
• Accounting software for [x]
• New York accounting software

Focus on a combination of “general” keywords, which can appeal to all kinds of customers like “accounting software”, and long-tail keywords. With long-tail keywords, you can add niche components which help you to appeal to a specific audience. For instance, “accounting software” becomes “SMB accounting software” or “US accounting software”.

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Step 3: Use Keyword Analysis Tools

Keyword analysis tools are one of the most valuable resources you’ll have for building your SEO campaign. They essentially allow you to examine how valuable each term on your keyword list is, and whether it’s a good idea for you to target it. Some keyword tools even help you to expand your keyword lists with relevant suggestions for other terms you can target.

Some great options include:

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Google Search: It isn’t a dedicated keyword tool, but it’s great for early brainstorming. Type a seed term to scan top results and use “People also ask” and “Related searches” for ideas.

Ahrefs: Use Ahrefs to find keywords and see what competitors rank for. It estimates search volume and difficulty and shows SERP overviews and content gaps.

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Moz: Moz’s Keyword Explorer suggests related terms and reports volume and difficulty. It also previews who already ranks, helping you gauge competition.

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SEMRush: SEMRush offers a large keyword database to find topics and analyze SERPs. You can check difficulty, see ranking pages, and benchmark competitors.

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KW Finder: KWFinder helps you discover new ideas and assess difficulty by country or language. It also reveals which keywords your competitors rank for.

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SEO PowerSuite: SEO PowerSuite is a desktop suite for rank tracking, on-page audits, and backlink analysis. Its SEO SpyGlass module helps you research competitors.

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Google Keyword Planner: Google Keyword Planner surfaces new keyword ideas with volume ranges and suggested PPC bids. It’s a straightforward source of Google data.

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Google Search Console: In the Performance report, you can see the queries each page already ranks for. Impressions and clicks per query point to keywords worth refining on the page.

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Google Trends: Google Trends shows seasonality and rising topics in near real time. It helps you spot timely ideas beyond 12-month average volumes.

Step 4: Filter Your Keywords

Notably, simply finding a huge range of terms and phrases related to your SaaS business won’t be enough to help you stand out online. You’ll also need to learn how to separate “good” keywords from bad ones. 

The easiest way to do this is to look at a few factors when inputting phrases into your keyword research tool. Key points to look at include:

• Keyword difficulty: The difficulty of a keyword looks at how challenging it might be to rank for a keyword, based on the amount of content that’s already available online. If a word is particularly difficult to rank for, you may need to invest a lot more into promoting your content, and producing complementary content and backlinks.
• Search volume: Search volume refers to how often people actually look for the keyword or phrase you’re going to be using. If no one is looking for a keyword, it’s pointless to build an entire content strategy around it. The ideal keywords will have a high level of volume, and a low level of difficulty or competition.
• Current ranking: If you’ve already started producing content for your website, then your company may be ranking for specific terms already. Knowing your current ranking for a keyword will help you to determine whether you should invest in that term further. You can also check to see where competitors are ranking in the search results.
• Search Intent: You may think that a keyword makes sense for your business, but you also have to make sure Google agrees with you. Input a target keyword into Google search and see what comes up. Would it make sense for your page to rank in the top 10 based on what’s already there, or is there a better way to phrase it to bring up more relevant results?

As you sort through your keywords, remove anything which isn’t going to deliver exceptional value to your customers or your business. Get rid of any words that are too competitive, or don’t have enough volume to be worthwhile.

Step 5: Cluster Into Pillars & Topics

After filtering the “good” keywords, turn your keyword set into a structure that mirrors how buyers think and how you sell. Organize your keywords into buckets to help you define blogs, pages, and posts you can write to boost your ranking. 

Make sure you have keywords which address all of the different stages of the purchasing cycle, and various intent levels. You can start by choosing a few durable pillars, usually:

• Product/feature themes
• Key integrations
• High-value industries/use cases
• Competitive topics

Pick two or three pillars that show up in sales conversations every week and build out from there. Each pillar gets one hub page that defines the topic and sets expectations, then a small set of supporting pieces that answer specific questions, show workflows, or provide tools. 

Name every page with clear intent and assign one primary keyword plus a handful of secondary terms. You then connect the hub to each support piece (and back again) so readers and crawlers can move through the set naturally. As you draft, keep clusters tight: one idea per URL, no overlap.

Example pillar set: 

• Usage-based billing (hub + “pricing models compared,” “metering methods,” “migration pitfalls”)
• NetSuite integration (hub + setup, troubleshooting, use cases)
• [You] vs Competitor X (hub + deeper head-to-heads).

Step 6: Plan the Right Page Types

Match the format of your clusters to the intent you saw in the SERP so readers get exactly what they expect and your page stands a chance to rank. Use the page types you can ship now then add a pillar guide to anchor each cluster.  Include real proof (screens, short clips, quotes), expert bylines, simple schema (FAQ/HowTo/Product as appropriate), and a clear next step.

These are the most common keyword types to guide your format selection:

Higher Value Keywords

• Informational Keywords: These are top of the funnel keywords that aren’t necessarily converting keywords indicative of an interested consumer. They are meant to provide answers to a general question about your industry and position you as the authority on a specific topic. An example might be “how does SEO work?” → Use guides, checklists, templates, glossaries, and link down to MOFU pages.
• Transactional keywords: These keywords are for consumers intent on making a purchase. They are usually the most competitive because they are high-converting. An example might be “SEO services for SaaS companies.” → Use feature pages, product/solution pages, pricing, demo pages, and comparison (“vs/alternatives”) assets.

Lower Value Keywords

• Commercial Keywords: When a user is looking for more information on a certain brand or service, they’ll likely use a commercial keyword. While these are great because it means a user is aware of your brand, they aren’t highly valuable for SEO because you want to attract mainly users who aren’t already looking for you. → Cover via brand pages, reviews/testimonials, case studies, and about/partner pages; don’t over-invest in net-new content here.
• Navigational Keywords: If a user has visited your site before and knows their way around it, they might want to navigate to a specific page from Google. You already have their attention, and therefore don’t need to optimize your pages for these types of keywords. → Ensure clear IA, breadcrumbs, sitelinks, and crawlable, titled pages; avoid building content just for these.

Ask yourself which keywords you will be using at the top of the funnel, when customers are first searching for solutions to their problems, and which you’ll be using at the bottom of your funnel. 

The keywords at the top and middle of the purchasing funnel will usually inform your blog posts and content marketing strategy. Alternatively, terms related to a high level of buyer intent may appear on your products and service pages.

How to Use Your Keyword Analysis for SaaS Content Marketing

Once you’ve collected and thoroughly analyzed your keywords, the next step is actually taking advantage of them. Use them to shape your site structure and content calendar. This turns research into qualified demand: more relevant traffic, stronger engagement on product pages, and content that supports real sales conversations.

Structure your site and your calendar

Place the pages you planned where people will actually click: 

• TOFU hubs live in Resources and link down to explainers
• MOFU pieces sit one click deeper
• BOFU assets (comparisons, integrations, pricing) sit one click from your main CTA. 

Turn the prioritized list into a rolling calendar (weekly or bi-weekly). Each publish should strengthen a pillar and open a new internal link path.

You can even use your keyword strategy to plan a long-term content schedule. Having a plan for exactly what you’re going to produce throughout your inbound marketing journey can save you a lot of time and effort in the long run. 

You can determine what kind of content you’re going to create with your keywords. For instance, does a certain term seem more relevant for an eBook, a blog post, a landing page, a case study , or a whitepaper?

Publish from briefs and distribute

Write from a one-page brief so drafts stay aligned with intent and the SERP. Add internal links while you draft. When you build out the content, share where your buyers already are: partner channels, integration directories, your newsletter, LinkedIn, and sales sequences.

Each brief should include:

• Target keywords + intent
• H2/H3 outline + must-answer questions (from PAA and call notes)
• Internal links, required assets (screens/diagrams), and a clear CTA

Measure, iterate, and keep the loop with paid

Report by cluster, not just by URL. In Search Console, watch near-wins (positions 5–20) and lift them with better anchors, clearer headings, and a couple of fresh examples or screenshots. You can then refresh BOFU/MOFU content quarterly by merging overlapping pages if intent has converged. 

Use paid search to test copy and surface converting queries, then promote the winners into your SEO plan. You can also mirror high-performing ad language on the matching BOFU pages.

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Master Keyword Analysis for SaaS Brands

Effective keyword analysis for your SaaS brand is crucial to help your business stand out in today’s competitive landscape. With the right keyword research, you’ll ensure you’re connecting with the right customer, at the right time.

Keyword analysis can be challenging. Building a good SaaS SEO strategy takes significant time, effort, and research. If you don’t have a marketing team in-house to help with the process, you might find you struggle to find the time to invest in choosing the right keywords. The best solution may be to seek out support from a SaaS SEO agency. SEO innovators like Amplifyed can help you to not only launch your keyword strategy, but scale it to suit your business too!

Our keyword analysis for SaaS can help your business grow. Contact Amplifyed today.