4 Types of SEO: Are They All Still Relevant for SaaS SEO?

There are four types of search engine optimization (SEO) a company can do to make their content rank and get in front of ideal users. These are on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, and local SEO.

What does each of these mean? Are they all still worth it to use as SaaS marketing search engine optimization techniques in 2022? Let’s get right to the point and break down how each type works as part of your SaaS SEO content.

What Are the Main Types of SEO?

• On-Page SEO includes your website copy and content, metadata, images and alt text, headlines–basically all the written and visual elements on a page or site. Your on-page SEO types and strategy directly relate to the keywords you target, which we will cover later.
• Off-Page SEO includes things done off your website to still increase your findability and industry authority. Writing an article for an industry blog, getting quoted in a press release, and even paid ads on search engines or social channels count as off-page SEO.

What is on-page and off-page SEO, if not your entire digital marketing strategy? These two might seem like they capture all your online activities as a business. But there are two other types of SEO to consider.

• Technical SEO is the continuous effort to make your site easy to navigate, secure, and inclusive to all users. Site loading time, security, and whether the same content is repeated on multiple webpages all impact technical SEO. In the past, bad SEO practices like keyword stuffing or link spamming were sometimes described as technical SEO. But the real goal of technical SEO (especially for a SaaS company web app or site) is to deliver a fast, secure, and enjoyable user experience.
• Local SEO encompasses how well you are ranking in your city or state for the keywords and topics that are important to you. This might not seem essential to a SaaS platform that can serve clients anywhere, but it is still relevant to help investors and job seekers find you if where you are located matters to them. Elements like Google My Business and getting involved with the community can improve local SEO.

How Many Types of SEO Are There?

Most marketers tend to agree with the four main SEO types, or they might reduce it to three: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. However, sites like Youtube and social media channels come with their own search and behavior algorithms that are a type of SEO all their own.

It’s also relevant to draw a distinction between two approaches to SEO, commonly called white hat SEO and black hat SEO. In this case, we feel totally comfortable saying white hat good, black hat bad.

• White hat SEO is the practice of gaining web authority by publishing high-quality content, using relevant keywords, and boosting organic traffic through social shares and ad spend.
• Black hat SEO is the practice of gaining web authority by forcing your content to the top through heavy spending and short-term wins that don’t keep you ranking #1 over time.

Black hat SEO is a wasted investment. The traffic finding its way to your site isn’t as likely to convert or be part of your target audiences. The content living on the webpage that is driving traffic may not be what your ideal users are looking for. Will the landing page help them understand how your SaaS solution could solve a pain point? If the content you’re promoting through keyword stuffing and buying backlinks isn’t actually relevant to your audience, there’s no point investing to drive it to the top, because the attention it gets isn’t the interest you want. Plus, the second a search engine algorithm changes, all your black hat work might go up in smoke.

What Is Important In SEO?

The most important element of winning at SEO is making sure you have high-quality content to satisfy the needs of your audience when they find you at the top of the search engine pages. However, writing great content is only part of what it takes to get to the top of page one on Google, Bing, Ecosia etc. The types of SEO keywords you choose to include, where you include them, and how you find those keywords to begin with are all part of the strategy to win page one.

SEO keyword types vary based on length, user intent, and structure of the keyword.

• Length: Keywords may be short-tail phrases of 2-3 words, or long-tail keyword phrases which contain 4 or more words.
• User Intent: Some keywords are searched by audiences who are just learning about their need for a product, while other keywords are connected to differentiating between different features or use cases. Understanding the intention and need of the person who is searching lets you target content that will catch and keep their attention.
• Structure of Keyword: Some keywords are complete questions or sentences. Others are fragments of a sentence, and might contain elements like numbers or a brand name.

Using a mix of all the SEO keyword types is important to a successful strategy. You can even use multiple keywords in each piece of content like a blog–we recommend a minimum of 8-10 (including your title).

How do you use keywords to make your content rank on page one? Here are some tips:

• Title/URL: In the case of content like blogs and even landing pages, make sure the title is a high-value keyword. Landing pages should have short-tail titles of a few words only, while a blog can have a longer title. Make sure the webpage URL contains the same main keyword as the title.
• Headlines and Text: On the body of the page itself, keywords should be included in all your headlines (H2s) as well as in the body of your copy. It can be easy to use questions as your headlines because this gives clear direction on what to include in the content underneath. You can also be confident you are directly addressing the concerns and curiosity that are bringing audiences in touch with products like yours.
• Metadata: Your metadata is 85-100 characters that appear underneath your page title in search results and might be the display text when your content is shared on social media. Using one or more keywords in the metadata can give your readers a sense of the questions you are going to answer.

These are some of the most important places to use SEO keywords and get your content to rank organically.

The last element of importance in SEO is where and how you get your keywords. Historically this has been a manual process using insights from the search engines themselves. Searching for your target phrase reveals the related searches and questions people are typing in. You might compare this list to some back-end analytics or search volume data, but a lot of the process is backward-looking guesswork.

We created DemandJump as an alternative keyword and content engine that is a one-stop solution for many content marketing needs today. Our Insights algorithm crawls the search behaviors around your topic, completing thousands of hours of research in a matter of minutes. The Insight Report you get in return shows the highest value keyword searches and questions audiences are asking. Pulling off the 4 types of SEO with precise accuracy has never been easier than with DemandJump’s Insights at your disposal. Take the guesswork out of your marketing and proceed with confidence: sign up today.