What We Can Learn from SaaS SEO Success Stories

Billie Asuncion
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November 9, 2023

Table of Contents

1. Monday.com: Mastering Content at Scale

2. Canva: Addressing User Intent with Strategic Sub-folders

3. Grammarly: Leveraging Brand Strength and Content Optimization

Explore the SEO journeys of leading SaaS companies like Monday.com, Canva, and Grammarly. Uncover how these giants each used unique strategies to dominate their sectors, from massive content operations and user-focused navigation to leveraging brand power and content optimization.

Attention is currency, and securing visibility online is crucial for the growth and sustainability of any business. This reality is especially true for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies, which operate in an incredibly competitive space where the battle for the top spot in search engine rankings can make all the difference.

Success in this arena often comes down to innovative, diligent, and strategic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts. How can you learn where to start?

It helps to take cues from tested methods. The following narratives offer not just inspiration but also practical lessons and strategies that can be adapted and applied to your business.

From leveraging content marketing and keyword optimization to building robust backlink portfolios, these SaaS high-flyers have each taken unique routes to SEO success.

3 Successful Saas SEO Case Studies

1. Monday.com: Mastering Content at Scale

Within a single year, Monday churned out a staggering 1,000 new blog posts under the strategic direction of Brad Smith. This translates to an average of 125 meticulously crafted, keyword-rich blog posts every month, a feat that propelled their site traffic and cemented their authority in the space.

Achieving this monumental task wasn’t an overnight success but a result of methodical planning and execution:

Rigorous Talent Selection: Out of more than 1500 applicants, only 15 writers were chosen. The selection emphasized not just talent, but an alignment with Monday.com’s stringent quality benchmarks.

Streamlined Editing Process: They relied on adept editors skilled at refining content to its purest quality without extensive rewrites, thereby maintaining efficiency and consistency.

Unprecedented Documentation: The team left nothing to chance. Every successful tactic, every valuable lesson, and every effective strategy was documented meticulously.

Scaling content creation doesn’t just require more resources; it demands a systematic approach, akin to building a franchise. This approach not only enhances online visibility through SEO but also establishes a sustainable framework for continuous growth and success in content marketing.

2. Canva: Addressing User Intent with Strategic Sub-folders

In the realm of online design tools, Canva stands as a titan with a user-friendly platform accessible via desktop, web, or mobile app. Attracting 400 million visitors monthly, with approximately 72 million stemming from organic traffic, Canva faced challenges typical of the design niche:

Technical Hurdles: Slow site load speeds and subpar responsiveness across devices threatened to hamper user experience.

Accessibility: Simplifying the often complex design process for users of varying expertise levels was crucial.

To tackle these issues, Canva implemented an ingenious strategy: the creation of purpose-driven sub-folders serving as dedicated landing pages. Examples include:

These sub-folders were far from arbitrary, each meticulously crafted to capture specific user search intents. For instance, the “create” sub-folder is a hub for users looking to design specific projects, offering tailored pages for infographics, resumes, logos, and more. This not only streamlined user navigation but also significantly boosted Canva’s rank for design-related keywords, pulling in substantial traffic.

Canva’s success underscores the importance of a user-centric approach, where understanding and addressing user intent leads to a win-win situation: a seamless user experience and a formidable ranking.

3. Grammarly: Leveraging Brand Strength and Content Optimization

Grammarly has revolutionized the way we communicate in digital spaces, offering error detection across 500,000+ websites and applications. But how does a service that operates predominantly on external platforms drive such significant organic traffic to its own site?

Concentrated Traffic Sources: An astonishing 90.07% of Grammarly’s organic search traffic is attributed to just 11.2% of its pages. These high-performing pages solve common user pain points, ensuring that a quick Google search for writing issues leads users straight to Grammarly.

Capitalizing on Common Mistakes: Recognizing that typos are, ironically, common in searches for their brand, Grammarly smartly invests in Google Ads for misspelled versions of its name, capturing an additional audience of approximately 590K searches.

Evergreen Content: Instead of relentless content creation, Grammarly focuses on regular updates to existing content, especially posts that remain perpetually relevant to readers. For instance, their page on adjectives pulls in a staggering 196k organic visits monthly.

There are a few things to learn from this. For one, offering free, valuable tools can dramatically drive SEO success when paired with intelligent keyword use and a keen focus on user search intent.

Secondly, a strong brand is invaluable for SEO, influencing both direct searches and organic traffic. This underscores the importance of brand awareness campaigns in tandem with SEO strategies.

Grammarly’s approach teaches us that understanding your users’ behavior and meeting them where they are is equally as important as traditional SEO tactics. This user-first approach, combined with smart brand and content strategies, is what sets Grammarly apart in the digital landscape.

Learning from Success

As we dissect the journeys of these SaaS giants, it’s evident that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to SEO success. Each of these companies — Monday.com, Canva, and Grammarly — have charted their paths, underscoring the importance of innovation, understanding user intent, and leveraging brand strengths in unique ways.

The key takeaways from these successful SaaS SEO case studies converge on several pivotal points: the necessity to understand and meet user search intents, the ingenuity to turn challenges into opportunities, the foresight to keep content ever relevant and updated, and the wisdom to balance organic and paid strategies effectively.