Top 10 SaaS SEO KPIs That Sky-Rocket Your Rankings

So you just hired a copywriter for your SaaS agency and you’re churning out some high-quality content. You can sense some improvement, but you’re not actually sure how much you’re improving. 

If that’s the case, don’t leave it up to guesswork. Instead, take some time to track some SaaS SEO KPIs to get accurate insights on your progress. From there, you can make a plan to address areas of improvement.

But what sorts of KPIs should you measure? In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about SEO KPIs for your SaaS agency!

What Exactly Are SaaS SEO KPIs?

SaaS SEO KPIs, or key performance indicators, act as valuable tools for quantifying the performance of your SaaS organization. They serve as an evaluation method for your company’s SEO and marketing strategies, making them integral for progress tracking.

Here’s an overview of SaaS SEO KPIs:

• They are measurable entities that shed light on your website’s performance.
• They identify areas that need improvement, enabling immediate action and loss prevention.
• They help assess the efficacy of your SEO efforts, thereby informing data-driven decisions.
• They include metrics like website traffic, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, bounce rate, and keyword ranking.

Ultimately, SaaS SEO KPIs can enhance your comprehension of what’s working and what needs adjustment in your SEO strategy. This will allow you to formulate potent plans for business growth.

Top 10 SaaS SEO KPIs & Metrics to Track

SEO KPIs are very many, so tracking all of them can actually be counterproductive. Instead, we recommend focusing on a select few SaaS SEO KPIs. Below we break down the top 10 KPIs you can use, and we show you how you can actually measure some of them. 

1. Keyword SERP Ranking

Keyword SERP rankings illustrate your website’s organic position in search results for specific keywords. Here’s a systematic guide to help monitor your SaaS company’s keyword SERP ranking:

1. Set up Google Search Console for your website: GSC can be your primary data source for keyword SERP ranking. 
2. Choose your keywords: These should represent your products, services, or content. They should also align with what your target audience would search online.
3. Track keyword performance on Google Search Console: Click on ‘Performance’ in the left menu, filter your search by keywords, and view your ranking data.

4. Analyze the results: Assess the ranking of each keyword. Prioritize keywords that rank in the top three positions on Google since they attract the most traffic.

5. Monitor and adjust: Consistently check your keyword rankings and modify your SEO strategy as required. 

To further improve your CTR, you can watch this video:

By following this routine, you’ll be better equipped to optimize your SEO techniques. This will help boost your visibility on Google, and ultimately draw more organic traffic to your SaaS company.

2. Conversion Tracking: MQL, SQL, PQL

Want to up your SaaS SEO game? Pay attention to conversion tracking! This handy KPI tracks actions like demo requests and free trial sign-ups. This means it can show you the effectiveness and profitability of your organic SEO strategy. Google Analytics 4 (GA-4) identifies 3 types of conversions:

1. Predefined conversions: Events already added as conversions in GA4. 
2. Marked events as conversion: Any event that you deem as a conversion can be marked as such.
3. Created events as conversions: These can be set up from Google Search Console and tracked as conversions.

How to Track Conversions

Now that we’ve covered the types of conversions, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to track your conversions:

1. Create an event: To determine the predefined conversions or create new ones, go to Google Search Console, click on ‘Admin’, then ‘Events’.

2. Track your conversions: After marking events as conversions, navigate ‘Admin’, then ‘Conversions’. There you’ll find a detailed list enumerating the quality and quantity of conversions happening on your SaaS website.

For more information on conversion tracking and creating events, you can refer to the following video:

Why Track Conversions

Consider the scenario where your e-commerce store doubles its sales overnight. Without conversion tracking, you would have no insight into what caused this surge. Therefore, keeping track of conversions is key to understanding and optimizing your performance.

Additionally, remember to consider the role of qualified leads (MQLs, SQLs, and PQLs) during conversion tracking. These leads indicate the level of interest or potential in prospective clients, highlighting the probability of conversion.

• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are individuals who have shown initial interest in your product.
• Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) are leads your sales team considers promising and ready for further engagement.
• Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) are users who have interacted with your product, often through a trial, making them potential paying customers. 

Understanding and tracking the behaviors of these leads are key to shaping your SaaS SEO strategy. Keeping an eye on these leads and conversion metrics can lead to more data-driven decisions, improved marketing strategies, and ultimately, increased profitability for your SaaS business.

3. Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is a critical KPI providing insights into the number of users, their session duration, and average engagement period.

To track organic traffic in Google Search Console, go to Reports > Acquisitions > Traffic Acquisitions. 

You’ll see two charts displaying the users by session default channel group over time and by session default channel group.

With this data, you can derive the following information:

• If your technical SEO and off-page SEO are spot-on, but your organic traffic is still minimal, it’s time to focus on on-page SEO and content creation.
• If a specific blog or webpage has low traffic, consider updating and optimizing its content to enhance its appeal and value.
• If your organic traffic is decent but your session times are low, it could mean that users aren’t finding value in your website, or are facing issues with your page speed or other technical things. 

According to DashThis, more than 75% of overall website traffic comes from organic searches, making it a key thing to monitor!

4. Backlinks

The quality and quantity of backlinks constitute another critical SaaS KPI metric in your SEO strategy. Conventional wisdom states that a higher number of backlinks to your site will cause Google to consider your website authoritative.

But the truth is, if your backlinks originate from websites with low domain authority, they might actually diminish your SEO performance.

So, it’s crucial to evaluate the health profile of your backlinks when seeking to enhance your SaaS website’s ranking. Here’s a classification of backlinks based on their health profile:

• Non-toxic: These high domain authority backlinks elevate your site’s reputation in search engines.
• Potentially toxic: Backlinks from spammy or irrelevant websites could harm your website’s SEO.
• Toxic: Sites employing blackhat SEO tactics link to your website and potentially damage your SEO.

Similarly, backlinks can be categorized based on their status:

• New: Backlinks that were recently added.
• Broken: Links that lead to a 404 error.
• Lost: Links that were removed from the website or by the admin.

You can monitor the status of your backlinks and referring domains using Google Search Console or Semrush. While Google Search Console provides the number of backlinks and linked websites, it lacks detailed information about the health status of these backlinks. That’s where Semrush comes in handy.

How to Analyze Backlink Health

Here’s how you can use Semrush to analyze backlink health:

1. Log in to your Semrush account and go to SEO > Link Building > Backlink Analytics.

2. Check your website’s Overall Toxicity Score. If it’s low, you’re on track. If it’s high, concentrate on enhancing the quality of your backlinks.

3. Eliminate toxic or potentially toxic backlinks even if your toxicity score is low. This will help you improve your rankings even further.

How to Remove Toxic Links

If you want to clean up your site from toxic links, follow these steps:

1. Find a ‘Backlinks to Review’ section under ‘Overall Toxicity Score’.

2. Click on the number next to toxic or potentially toxic backlinks and find the full list of harmful links.

Once there, you have a couple of options: either Whitewash or Disavow the links. 

• Whitewash: remove a website from the toxic list if you can verify its non-toxic status.
• Disavow: Move truly toxic sites to this list and contact the website administrator to remove links to your site from their toxic site.

If the administrator doesn’t respond to your request, export the Disavow list and upload the file to Google’s Disavow tool. From there, rest assured that Google will exclude these toxic websites from consideration in future SEO value assessments of your site.

Number of Referring Domains

Another KPI closely related to backlinks is referring domains. The number and quality of referring domains is another critical SEO KPI, particularly for SaaS companies. In SEO terms, ‘referring domains’ denotes unique websites that are linked back to your site. The goal isn’t merely quantity, but diversity.

Imagine your site receives 200 links from 200 different websites. Search engines perceive this as a more potent sign of authority than if you had 200 links originating from one site. So when crafting your comprehensive SEO strategy, referring domains should be at the forefront. 

Just as with backlinks, the quality of the referring domain significantly contributes to your website’s SEO.

5. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of people who visit your website and leave after viewing just one page. Imagine someone entering a store, looking around, but walking out without making a purchase — that’s a bounce.

To add and monitor your website’s bounce rate:

1. Go to your website’s Google Analytics and navigate to Reports > Engagement > Pages and Screens.
2. Click on ‘Customize Report’ at the top right corner to add the Bounce Rate to your website’s metric.

3. Find and add the Bounce Rate metric from the ‘Add Metric’ section.

4. Click on ‘Save’.

5. Adjust the pages with a higher bounce rate to encourage users to stay on them longer.

Bear in mind, an average bounce rate falls between 26-70%. Anything higher warrants your attention. Begin strategizing to improve user experience, boost page engagement, and reduce bounces.

For further guidance on using Google Analytics to track Bounce Rate, you can watch the following video:

6. Return on Investment (ROI)

In the SEO realm for SaaS businesses, Return on Investment gauges the financial efficiency of your SEO endeavors. It tells you whether your investment positively impacts your bottom line.

You can track your SEO efforts’ ROI with the following steps:

1. Calculate the total investment you are making for the website’s SEO. This should encompass the cost of in-house SEO resources, freelancer services, SEO agencies, and any SEO tools you are utilizing. 
2. Use Google Analytics 4 to monitor and analyze your conversions. This data will help you know the conversion rate for your e-commerce store, as well as any other monetary value your website is generating.

• For your e-commerce store, navigate to Reports > Monetization > E-commerce purchases.

How to Find Your ROI Outside Your E-Commerce Store

If your SaaS product isn’t listed in your e-commerce store, you might not be able to use the method above. So, if purchases are made directly from your website, you should implement a ‘Thank You’ page that pops up post-purchase. This will help you determine your ROI. Here’s how:

1. Create a new event from Admin > Events > Create Event.

2. Give your event a name, then select your parameter, operator, and value.

3. Mark this new event as a conversion.

4. Head to the ‘Conversions’ section. For your newly created event, click ‘Add Modification’ in the ‘Parameter Configuration’ section.

5. Go to the parameters field and add the currency type and the new value as the quantity of currency.

6. Click on ‘Save’.

Let’s say your SaaS product is priced at $90. In that case, input the parameter as USD, and the new value as 90. From now on, each time a user lands on the ‘Thank You’ page, Google will add a 90 USD value to its report, enabling you to calculate your total conversions.

Once you’ve calculated your conversions and investments, you can use the ROI formula to calculate the return you’re getting on your investments. 

Remember, SEO ROI isn’t immediate, but with perseverance and continuous strategy optimization, you’ll begin to see the difference in your rankings. Your managers will also appreciate the clear demonstration of ROI’s direct influence on the company’s bottom line. Playing the SEO ROI game is indeed a worthwhile endeavor!

And as a bonus, you can actually use some tools to boost content’s ROI. Don’t miss the opportunity to leverage them!

7. User Engagement

Users’ engagement level is a vital SEO KPI that indicates how users interact with your SaaS solutions. This includes tracking web traffic and click-through rates. High engagement often indicates an increase in quality leads, making it crucial for SaaS SEO.

The umbrella term ‘User Engagement’ comprises several sub-metrics such as:

• Engagement Rate
• Bounce Rate
• Average Engagement Duration
• Average Session Duration
• Engaged Sessions
• Sessions Per User
• Lifetime Engaged Sessions
• Lifetime Engagement Duration 

User Engagement refers to the period in which users actively interact with your website or application. Google begins recording user engagement time when a user starts a new session. The time stops when:

• The user moves the tab to the background or opens a new tab.
• The site or app crashes.
• The user navigates away from your webpage.

How to Find Your User Engagement Metrics

To access these engagement metrics, navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition. 

Aim to increase your KPI by striving for a 70% scroll depth and actively responding to user queries. Engaged users are potential customers and brand ambassadors!

8. Non-Branded vs. Branded Searches

Understanding the importance of tracking non-branded vs. branded searches for your Saas SEO KPIs is key. Non-branded searches reveal effective keywords and reflect your SEO success. For example, an increase in non-branded search traffic can indicate growing brand awareness.

Conversely, branded searches, hold high conversion potential, reflecting your brand strength, regardless of their direct link to conversions. Ranking number one for your branded keywords prevents loss of traffic to competitors and indicates your team’s effectiveness over time. 

9. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-through rate (CTR) is a ratio showing the number of users who click on your site link after viewing it on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). If 10 out of 100 people who see your site on a SERP click to visit, you have a 10% CTR. CTR is vital because:

• It gauges the attractiveness of your SEO metadata.
• It signifies your site’s relevance, potentially boosting SEO rankings.

It provides insights into visitor intent and your page performance, indicating conversion potential.

10. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) represents the total marketing and sales expenditure divided by the number of new customers acquired. If your marketing campaign costs $10,000 and attracts 100 new clients, your CAC is $100. 

CAC indicates the cost-effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts. If you’re over-spending per customer, your business model might require adjustment.

A Non-KPI Metric That SEOs Track: Churn Rate

The churn rate reflects the percentage of customers lost over a certain period and is crucial for determining product stickiness and customer satisfaction. 

Here’s how to calculate it:

1. Subtract the number of users at the end of a given period from the number of users you had at the start of this period. This is the number of users you lost.
2. Divide the number of users you lost by the number of users you had at the start of the period. 
3. Multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage.

If you start with 100 customers and end with 80, your churn rate is 20%. Minimize this percentage to single digits! A high churn rate indicates potential issues that require immediate attention.

Enhancing ROI for Your SaaS Tools

So, now that you know what metrics and KPIs to track, it’s time to figure out how you can improve them. In this section, we’ll focus on four different tools, Semrush, Ahrefs, GSC, and Google Analytics. 

We’ll first put Semrush and Ahrefs head to head, then talk about the advantages of using GSC or Google Analytics. 

Semrush or Ahrefs for Keyword Research and Website Auditing

For keyword research and website audits, Semrush and Ahrefs are top-notch tools. Semrush excels with organic traffic insights and automated link building. Ahrefs, on the other hand, offers comprehensive keyword tools and backlink monitoring.

Now, when you juxtapose the two on various levels, you get:

Semrush

Pros	Cons
Convenient for on-page SEO if you already use Semrush	Complex and limited writing assistant
Extensive ranking factors, seamless integration with Google Analytics, and SEO writing assistant	Lacking sufficient WordPress tools and compatibility with other applications

Pricing: Starts at $119.95 per month.

Ahrefs

Pros	Cons
Places a significant emphasis on domain authority	Isn’t the best for keyword research
Includes traffic checker and SEO health monitor tools	Doesn’t have as many SEO analytics tools

Pricing: Starts at $99 per month.

Google Search Console and Google Analytics (GA4)

Google Search Console and Google Analytics (GA4) are invaluable SEO tools that can significantly enhance your SaaS platform’s ROI. They offer insightful analytics into your website’s performance and areas that need optimization.

Some of their top features include:

• Organic click and session tracking
• Demographic and device metrics
• Top query, page, and country data
• Bounce rate analytics
• Conversion metrics

Pros	Cons
Provide a comprehensive view of site performance	Rely excessively on Google services
Are free to use and offer immense analytical capabilities	May need technical expertise to navigate advanced features
Facilitate tracking visitor behavior	Lack real-time data
Help evaluate SEO strategies with real data	Display inconsistent data occasionally
Provide alerts and regular reports	Have a complex initial setup process. Can be challenging to understand Google Analytics

In essence, these tools are instrumental in customizing your SEO strategies for enhanced engagement and improved ROI. 

Track Your Way to SEO Success

To ensure the prosperity of your SaaS enterprise in all aspects of SEO, it’s crucial to concentrate on your SEO KPIs and strive to obtain exceptional scores. Investments in resources such as time, money, and energy are vital to the success of any business, including SaaS.

If your ambition is to catapult your SaaS company to extraordinary heights, ensure that perfection is reflected in your services, products, content, and marketing strategy. Remember that tools like Outranking can become your allies on this journey. They can shoulder half your workload, enabling you to deliver meticulously researched, high-quality content for impeccable on-page SEO.

So why wait? Sign up today and start your ascent towards unparalleled success — because for your SaaS venture, the sky is truly the only limit!