How to use Google Search Console: a beginner’s guide

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Do you have a website or maintain the website of the company you work for? Of course, to do this right, you need to keep a keen eye on the performance of your website. Google offers several tools to collect and analyze data from your website. You probably have heard of Google Analytics and Google Search Console before. These tools are free for everyone maintaining a website and can give you valuable insights about your website. Here, we’ll explain how to use Google Search Console for SEO!

Table of contents

Why use Google Search Console?

Google Search Console helps you track the performance of your website easily. You can get valuable insights from your Google Search Console account, which means you can see what part of your website needs work. This can be a technical part of your website, such as an increasing number of crawl errors that need to be fixed. This can also give a specific keyword more attention because the rankings or impressions are decreasing. Or find the reasons why some pages aren’t indexed.

Besides seeing this kind of data, you’ll get email notifications when Google Search Console notices new errors. Because of these notifications, you’re quickly aware of issues you must fix. That’s why everyone with a website should learn how to use it!

the google search console overview page with menu items to the left and graphs on the right
The Google Search Console Overview page

Search Console is structured around various sections

Search Console has several sections, which keep expanding as Google adds more:

  • URL Inspection
    • The URL Inspection tool lets you get insights on specific URLs and how Google sees and indexes these. You’ll also see if the page is eligible for rich results.
  • Performance
    • In the Performance section, you’ll discover how your site is doing in the regular search results, on Discover, and Google News, if it is eligible for those.
  • Indexing
    • In the Indexing section, you’ll find all the insights you need to see how Google discovers and indexes your pages. You can also learn if and how Google is indexing the video content on your site. There’s also a section to check your XML sitemaps and any page removals you may have requested.
  • Experience
    • The Experience section gives you an idea of how Google values your page’s performance on mobile and desktop, with a little help from Core Web Vitals, and whether your pages are served via HTTPS connections.
  • Shopping
    • In the Shopping tab, you’ll find more information about how Google sees your products — if you own an ecommerce site or sell something else online. You can see which products have rich results, plus insights into your merchant listings and how you appear in Google Shopping.
  • Enhancements
    • The Enhancements section lists all the structured data that Google found on your site and whether or not it is eligible for rich results. This includes events, reviews, job postings, and more.
  • Security & Manual Actions
    • The Security & Manual Actions destination shouldn’t be visited often, as it lists security issues found by Google or when it issues a manual action against your site.
  • Links
    • The Links section overviews your site’s internal and external links.

Setting up an account

You’ll need to create an account to start using Google Search Console. Within Google Search Console, you can click on ‘add a new property’ in the top bar:

adding a new site property in the top left-hand side of the search console screen
Add a new property to get started

You can insert the website you want to add by clicking the ‘Add property’ button. If you choose the new Domain option, you only need to add the domain name without www or subdomains. This option tracks everything connected to that domain. With the ‘old’ URL prefix option, you must add the correct URL, so with ‘HTTPS’ if you have an HTTPS website and with or without ‘www’. To collect the correct data, it’s essential to add the correct version:

selecting the property type gives two options, for domain or url prefix
Choose domain if you want to track all your URLs or URL prefix if you want to track specific URLs

You must verify that you’re the owner when you’ve added a website. There are several options to verify your ownership. The Domain option only works with DNS verification, while the URL prefix supports different methods. You can learn more about the differences in Google’s documentation: adding a new property and verifying your site ownership. You can also use Google’s Site Kit WordPress plugin to connect Analytics and Search Console while giving you statistics in your site dashboard.

Add to Yoast SEO

For WordPress users who use Yoast SEO, get the verification code via the ‘HTML tag’ method from the Ownership settings in Search Console. Copy the long, random string of characters.

download html file to get the verification code
See your verification methods in the Google Search Console ownership settings

You can easily copy the code and paste it into the Google field in the ‘Site connections’ section in the settings of your Yoast SEO plugin:

in yoast seo general settings you'll find the site connections option to add the google search console verification code
Paste your code into the Google field to finish the process

After saving this, you can return to Google Search Console and click the ‘Verify’ button to confirm. If everything is ok, you’ll get a success message, and GSC will start collecting data for your website.

Features in Google Search Console

Now that you’ve set up your account, what’s the next step? Well, it’s time to look at some of your data! In the rest of this article, we’ll explore some of the reports and information available.

Performance tab

In the Performance tab, you can see the pages and keywords your website ranks for in Google. If you’re eligible for that, you’ll also find reports on your content’s performance in Google Discover and on Google News. You’ll get 16 months of performance data for your reports.

If you check the performance tab regularly, you can quickly see what keywords or pages need more attention and optimization. So, where to begin? Within the performance tab, you see a list of ‘queries’, ‘pages’, ‘countries’, or ‘devices’. With ‘search appearance,’ you can check how your rich results are doing in search. You can sort each section by the number of ‘clicks’, ‘impressions’, ‘average CTR’, or ‘average position’. We’ll explain each of them below:

performance section in google search console
The Performance overview harbors a ton of information

1. Clicks

The number of clicks tells you how often people clicked on your website in Google’s search results. This number can say something about the performance of your page titles and meta descriptions: if just a few people click on your result, your result might not stand out in the search results. It can be helpful to check what other results are displayed around you to see how you can optimize your snippet.

The position of the search result also impacts the number of clicks. If your page is in the top three of Google’s first result page, it will automatically get more clicks than a page that ranks on the second page of the search results.

2. Impressions

The impressions tell you how often your website or a specific page is shown in the search results. The number of impressions after this keyword shows how often our website is shown for that keyword in Google’s search results. You don’t know yet what page ranks for that keyword.

To see what pages might rank for the specific keyword, you can click on the line of the keyword. Doing this for a keyword, the keyword is added as a filter:

search performance data for a specific post on a site
You can query the data in many ways

Afterward, you can navigate to the ‘Pages’ tab to see what pages rank for this keyword. Are those pages the ones you’d want to rank for that keyword? If not, you might need to optimize the page you’d like to rank. Think of writing better content containing the keyword on that page, adding internal links from relevant pages or posts to the page, making the page load faster, etc.

3. Average CTR

The CTR – Click-through rate – tells you what percentage of the people who have seen your website in the search results also clicked through to your website. You probably understand that higher rankings mostly also lead to higher click-through rates.

However, you can also do things yourself to increase the CTR. For example, you could rewrite your meta description and page title to make it more appealing — Yoast SEO has AI features to help you do that. When the title and description of your site stand out from the other results, more people will probably click on your result, and your CTR will increase. Remember that this will not significantly impact you if you’re not ranking on the first page yet. You might need to try other things first to improve your ranking.

4. Average position

The last one on this list is the ‘Average position’. This tells you the average ranking of a specific keyword or page in your selected period. Of course, this position isn’t always reliable since more and more people seem to get different search results. Google seems to understand better and better which results fit which visitor best. However, this indicator still shows whether the clicks, impressions and average CTR are explainable.

Indexing

The’ Indexing’ section is a more technical but treasured addition to Google Search Console. This section shows how many pages have been in Google’s index since the last update, how many pages haven’t, and what errors and warnings caused Google to index your pages incorrectly. Google split this section into parts, collecting your regular pages and video pages while giving a home for your XML sitemap and the removals sections.

the indexing report in search console shows how google indexes your pages
You can see how Google indexes your content over time

We recommend you check this tab regularly to see what errors and warnings appear on your website. However, you also get notifications when Google has found new errors. Please check the error in more detail when you get such a notification.

You may find that errors are caused when, e.g., a redirect doesn’t seem to work correctly, or Google finds broken code or error pages in your theme. You also find error messages like “Crawled – currently not indexed“. Google has a long list of possible reasons why pages aren’t indexed and what you can do to fix that.

Clicking on one of the issues, you can analyze the error more in-depth to see what specific URLs are affected. When you’ve fixed the error, you can mark it as fixed to make sure Google will test the URL again:

example of an indexing errors, this is excluded by nonindex tag in search console
Fixed the specific error? Validate it so Google can check if it’s gone for real

Things to look out for

There are a few things you should always look for when checking out your indexing coverage reports:

  • If you’re writing new content, your indexed pages should steadily increase. This tells you two things: Google can index your site, and you keep your site ‘alive’ by adding content.
  • Watch out for sudden drops! This might mean that Google is having trouble accessing (all of) your website. Something may be blocking Google; whether it’s robots.txt changes or server downtime, you need to look into it!
  • Sudden (and unexpected) spikes in the graph might mean an issue with duplicate content (such as both www and non-www, wrong canonicals, etc.), automatically generated pages, or even hacks.

We recommend you monitor these situations closely and resolve errors quickly, as too many errors could signal low quality (poor maintenance) to Google.

URL Inspection

The URL Inspection tool helps you analyze specific URLs. You retrieve the page from Google’s index and compare it with the page as it lives now on your site to see if there are differences. You can also find more technical info on this page, such as when and how Google crawled it and how it looked at that moment. Sometimes, you’ll also notice several errors. This might be regarding Google’s inability to crawl your page correctly. It also gives information about the structured data found on this URL.

url inspection in search console showing if a page is indexed and if it has enhancements
The URL Inspection tool gives insights into every URL on your site

Experience

The experience report is an invaluable addition. It gives a good idea of how fast your site loads on mobile and desktop and how Google uses core web vitals to grade page experience. It shows which pages have issues that keep them from performing well. The data is based on the Chrome UX report, so it’s accurate data from real users.

Site speed, page experience, and user experience are complex topics with many moving parts, so learning how to think about page speed is good. The answer is here: how to check site speed.

page experience and core web vitals reports show urls that aren't good
Find out which pages offer a bad experience and how you can fix that

Enhancements: rich results

If you have structured data on your site — provided by Yoast SEO, for instance — it’s a good idea to check out the Enhancements reports in Search Console. The Enhancements tab collects all the insights and improvements that could lead to rich results. It lists all the structured data that Google found on your site. There’s an ever-expanding list of rich results, and you can find the following, among other things:

  • Breadcrumbs
  • Events
  • FAQs
  • Job postings
  • Profile pages
  • Review snippets
  • Sitelinks searchboxes
  • Videos

All these tabs show how many valid enhancements you have or how many have errors or warnings. You get details about the kind of errors and warnings and on which URLs these are found. There’s also a trend line that shows if the number of issues is increasing or decreasing. And that’s just the start of it.

an example of the enhancement reports in this case for job postings
Here’s an example of a job posting enhancement. You can overlay Impressions to get more context for the stats

The Enhancements reports help you find and fix issues that hinder the performance of your rich results in search. By checking the issues, reading the support documentation, and validating fixes, you can increase your chance of getting rich results in search. We have a more expansive guide on the structured data Enhancement reports in Google Search Console.

Sitemaps

An XML sitemap is a roadmap to all important pages and posts on your website. Every website would benefit from having one. Do you run the Yoast SEO plugin on your website? Then, you automatically have an XML sitemap. If not, we recommend creating one to ensure Google can easily find your most important pages and posts.

You can find an option for XML sitemaps within the Indexing tab of Google Search Console. Here, you can tell Google where your XML sitemap is located on your site:

google search console showing the status of your xml sitemaps
Don’t forget to check your XML sitemap

We recommend that everyone enter the URL of their XML sitemap into GSC to make it easy for Google to find. In addition, you can quickly see if your sitemap gives errors or if some pages aren’t indexed. Regularly checking this ensures that Google can find and read your XML sitemap.

We recommend regularly checking the XML sitemap section in our plugin to manage which post types or taxonomies you include in your sitemaps!

Shopping

Google Search Console also has a Shopping section. Here, you can check how Google sees your products and if they get proper rich results. You’ll see if they are valid or if they are missing fields that make the product snippets more prominent. Click on a product to see which fields are missing for particular products and if these are essential parts or nice-to-haves. If you’ve added these to the structured data of your products, you validate the fix in Search Console.

In the Shopping section, you’ll also find your Google Merchant listings and an option to enable shopping tab listings to show your products on the Shopping tab in Google Search. With these options, Google gives ecommerce site owners — and people selling stuff — more ways of checking how their listings are doing.

google search console shopping section showing the product snippets of a site
Optimize your product listings in Google search

Links

Within the links to your site section, you can see how many links from other sites are pointing to your website. Besides, you can see what websites link, how many links those websites contain, and what anchor texts are used most when linking to your website. This can be valuable information because links are still vital for SEO.

the links section in search console showing the top internal and external linked pages
Find out which pages receive lots of links

Within the internal links section, you can check what pages of your website are most linked from other spots on your site. This list can be valuable to analyze regularly because you want your most important pages and posts to get the most internal links. By doing this, you make sure Google understands your cornerstones as well.

per page information on external links in google search console
You can even see how many links individual pages get

Manual Actions

You don’t want to see anything in the manual actions tab. If Google penalizes your site, you’ll get more information. If your site is affected by a manual action, you’ll also get an email message.

Several scenarios can lead to these kinds of penalties, including:

  • You have unnatural/bought links
    Ensure links from and to your site are valuable, not just for SEO. Preferably, your links come from related content that is valuable for your readers.
  • Your site has been hacked
    A message stating your site’s probably hacked by a third party. Google might label your site as compromised or lower your rankings.
  • You’re hiding something from Google
    If you’re ‘cloaking’ (that is, intentionally showing different content to users to deceive them), or using ‘sneaky’ redirects (e.g., hiding affiliate URLs), then you’re violating Google’s guidelines (now known as Google Search Essentials).
  • Plain Spam
    Automatically generated content, scraped content, and aggressive cloaking could cause Google to blocklist your site.
  • Spammy structured markup
    If you use rich snippets for too many irrelevant elements on a page or mark up content hidden from the visitor, that might be considered spammy. Mark up what’s necessary and only necessary things.

Security issues

Within the security issues tab, you’ll get a notification when your website seems to have a security issue.

Google Search Console is essential

Reading this post should give you a good idea of what Search Console is capable of and how to use it, so we’d like to ask you this: Do you already use Google Search Console for your website? If not, create an account to collect data about your website. Do you think something is missing? Feel free to leave a comment!

Read on: How to make your site stand out in the search results »

The post How to use Google Search Console: a beginner’s guide appeared first on Yoast.

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Enhance keyword research with Yoast SEO and Semrush

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In SEO, using top tools is key. Yoast and Semrush have joined forces to combine their technologies. This integration benefits WordPress and Shopify users by improving their SEO work. Yoast SEO offers easy-to-use SEO features, while Semrush brings solid data that can be used for keyword research. This article will explore the Related Keyphrase feature, which uses Semrush’s keyword data.

Table of contents

Why integrate Yoast SEO with Semrush?

SEO involves more than just content optimization; it requires understanding the search landscape and adopting strategies. The Yoast SEO and Semrush integration offers powerful tools for various SEO areas, like finding keywords, planning, implementation, and analysis.

Benefits for WordPress users

Benefits for WordPress users include enhanced keyword research. You can access Semrush’s vast database from the WordPress editor to find and apply effective related keywords. Get real-time SEO suggestions to refine your content as you write using current SEO data. This integration simplifies your work. You don’t have to jump between tools and platforms as much, so you can concentrate on writing content that ranks.

Advantages for Shopify store owners

Advantages for Shopify store owners include access to ecommerce keywords. These insights help drive targeted traffic to your store. Conduct SEO health checks to analyze and optimize product descriptions and meta tags, ensuring full SEO compliance. Integrating targeted keywords into your Shopify store’s content enhances visibility and boosts conversion potential.

Using Semrush for related keyphrases

Setting up the integration is simple for both WordPress and Shopify users. Connect your Semrush account to Yoast through the plugin or app interface. This lets you access keyword analytics and SEO advice right in your dashboard. If you haven’t installed Yoast SEO yet, start there. We offer a guide to help you with the setup.

Finding related keyphrases

Related keyphrases, or related keywords, are terms linked to your main keyword. They boost your content’s relevance, which helps search engines grasp your page’s topic and details. Adding related keyphrases makes your content more comprehensive and informative. This enhances its visibility in search results, as search engines favor pages that cover a topic thoroughly.

Using related keyphrases also avoids keyword stuffing, leading to more natural, reader-friendly text. This approach attracts more organic traffic and helps your content rank for a wider range of search queries.

Getting started with related keyphrases

Navigate to the post or page you wish to optimize in the content editor. To access the Semrush tool, locate the Focus keyphrase section and enter your main focus keyphrase. Then, click the Get related keyphrases button, and a pop-up will appear.

Enter your focus keyphrase and click the Get related keyphrase button to access the Semrush pop-up

Semrush presents related keyphrases in the pop-up, including search volume, search intent, difficulty, and trends. For more detailed insights or to explore further, use the Keyword Magic Tool in Semrush. Alternatively, use your preferred keyword research tools to gather additional insights.

Search volume and difficulty data help understand popularity

Semrush’s search volume data shows how often users search for a specific keyword or keyphrase each month. This metric highlights the keyword’s popularity and demand. High search volume suggests strong interest, while low volume indicates fewer searches. You can use search volume data to identify trends over time, spotting seasonal or emerging keywords. Analyzing these volumes helps you gauge your content’s potential reach and find high-demand keywords to target.

However, high search volumes often mean high competition. Balancing search volume with keyword difficulty is key. Keyword Difficulty measures how hard it is to rank in the top ten for a keyword, ranging from 0% to 100%. Lower percentages mean less competition, making it easier to rank, while higher percentages indicate tough competition requiring significant effort.

Yoast SEO shows intent, volume, trend and difficulty data for suggested keyphrases

Semrush and search intent

Semrush provides tools to integrate search intent into your keyword research. Understanding search intent allows you to tailor content to user needs, improving rankings and attracting relevant traffic.

Semrush offers a search intent metric for each keyword, helping you identify whether a keyword is navigational, informational, commercial, or transactional. This insight lets you align your content with user searches. For instance, commercial intent keywords might lead to content focused on comparisons or reviews, while transactional keywords benefit from clear calls-to-action.

You can explore keywords based on search intent using Yoast SEO’s Related Keyphrases tool. This helps you target the most relevant keywords for your content goals. You might focus on informational keywords for a blog aimed at new audiences. For an ecommerce site, combining commercial and transactional keywords can attract potential buyers to your product pages.

Yoast SEO also shows search intent and keyword difficulty data from Semrush

Integrating related keyphrases into your content

Select the most relevant and beneficial related keyphrases from the list provided by Semrush. Focus on search volume, difficulty, and how they relate to your main topic. You can add up to four additional related keyphrases to your content. Yoast SEO will factor in these related keyphrases when analyzing your content and offering suggestions for improvement.

Incorporate related keyphrases naturally

After selecting the best keywords, add them naturally to your content. Avoid keyword stuffing. Use related keyphrases in sections like subheadings, bullet points, and within the body text. Ensure they complement the primary keyphrase and enrich the content’s context.

Include related keyphrases in meta descriptions and image alt texts to expand your content’s relevance. Yoast SEO will give feedback on their integration and suggest improvements.

Analyze and optimize

Once you’ve integrated the related keyphrases, check the analysis from Yoast SEO. The plugin will offer tips for further optimization. Focus on readability and overall keyword usage. Adjust your content based on Yoast SEO’s suggestions to ensure it’s optimized for primary and related keyphrases.

Better keywords with Semrush and Yoast SEO

The Yoast SEO and Semrush integration is a great tool for marketers, content creators, and ecommerce professionals. This partnership helps improve your SEO on WordPress and Shopify by combining data-driven keyword research with practical SEO implementation.

Enhance your SEO by connecting Yoast SEO and Semrush today. Experience the benefits of integrated SEO tools right at your fingertips. Have fun exploring the integration!

The post Enhance keyword research with Yoast SEO and Semrush appeared first on Yoast.

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What is search intent and why is it important for SEO?

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SEO is a way to get more traffic to your website. By ranking high on Google, you attract more people to your site, which leads to more sales and returning visitors. You must optimize your content for the right words to get people to your site. However, you should consider search intent to increase your chances of ranking, convincing people to buy your stuff, subscribing to your newsletter, or even returning to your website. We’ll tell you what search intent is and how you can optimize your content for search intent.

Table of contents

What is search intent?

Search intent (or user intent, audience intent) is the term used to describe the purpose of an online search. It’s the reason why someone conducts a specific search. After all, everyone who does an online search hopes to find something. But is someone looking for an answer to a question they have? Are they looking to visit a specific website? Or are they searching online because they want to buy something? Many of these types of searches are part of the user journey online, but often they represent different stages.

Over the years, Google has worked hard to improve its algorithm to determine people’s search intent. Google wants to rank pages that best fit the search term someone is using and the search intent behind the search query. That’s why you need to make sure that your post or page fits your audience’s search intent.

Four main types of search intent

There are a few distinct types of search intent. We’ll go into the four most commonly used ones, but we’ll start with an infographic describing the four types in short:

an image describing the four main types of search intent, navigational, informational, commercial, transactional
There are four main types of search intent

1. Navigational intent

The first type of search intent is called navigational intent. People with this intent want to visit a specific website. For example, people searching for [Facebook] online are usually on their way to the website. So, you want to make sure that your website can be found when someone searches for your company’s name online.

an example of a navigational search, in this case for yoast
Google’s search results for the term [Yoast]

Remember that ranking high for a navigational term is mainly beneficial if your site is what people are looking for. Years ago, we had a Google Analytics plugin that ranked well for the term [Google Analytics]. But that didn’t drive any traffic to our site. People searching for [Google Analytics] specifically were looking for the Google Analytics website and were often not interested in our plugin.

2. Informational intent

On to informational intent. People looking for information do lots of searches on the internet. This could be information about the weather, educating children, SEO, you name it. People with informational intent have a specific question or want to know more about a topic.

an example of an informational search for the term tomato sauce in google
Google’s search results for the term [omato sauce]

You should know that Google understands intent beyond simply showing results that give information about a specific term. It knows, for instance, that people looking for [tomato sauce] are most likely looking for recipes, not for the sauce’s culinary history. It understands that most people typing in [Mercury] are looking for the planet, not the element. Google even understands it’s handy to include videos and images for search terms, like [how to build a bird feeder].

3. Commercial investigation

Some people intend to buy in the (near) future and use the web to research. What washing machine would be best? Which WordPress SEO plugin is the most helpful? These people also have transactional intent but need more time and convincing. These types of search intents are usually called commercial investigating intents.

google results with more commercial information about washing machines
Google’s search results for the term [best washing machines 2024]

4. Transactional intent

The fourth type of search intent is transactional intent. Many people buy stuff online and browse the web to find the best purchase. People are searching with transactional intent when they intend to buy something at that moment. That means that they already know exactly what they want to buy and want to get to that product page immediately.

google search result for an ikea lamp showing places to buy
Google’s search results for the term [IKEA PS 2014]

Keyword intent

People’s words in their search queries give us insight into user intent. This also works the other way around. By formulating keywords with intent-specific words, you can increase your chances of being seen by people with matching search intent.

What do we mean by intent-specific words? Well, keywords with transactional intent will often contain words like:

  • buy
  • deal
  • discount
  • product names

To give another example, informational searches can (but don’t necessarily have to) contain words like:

  • information
  • how to
  • best way to
  • why

How to optimize your content for search intent

Why are we telling you this? Because you want to ensure that a landing page fits your audience’s search intent. If people are looking for information, you don’t want to show them a product page. At least, not immediately. You’ll scare them away. But if someone wants to buy your product and lands on one of your lengthier blog posts, you might lose them. In this case, you want to lead them to your shop and the right product page.

Optimizing your product pages for commercially driven keywords is a good idea. For instance, if you sell dog vitamins, you could optimize a product (category) page for the search term [buy dog vitamins]. Perhaps you also have an article about administering vitamins. You could optimize that article for the search term [how to give vitamins to my dog] and aim it at people with informational intent.

Research your audience’s search intent

Sometimes, it can be quite hard to determine the search intent of a query. And perhaps different users that use the same search term will have a (slightly) different user intent. Luckily, there is a direct source to look at to know which intent fits your keywords best: the search results pages. Find out how you can use the results pages to create intent-based content.

If you want to know more about your audience’s search intent, another way is to ask them. Create a short survey containing questions about what people are searching for, and make that survey pop up when people visit your website. That’ll give you valuable insights into your audience and their intent. Please don’t be too intrusive with these kinds of pop-ups, as this can hurt the user experience on your website.

Search intent in Yoast SEO with Semrush

Aiming your content with the right intent is important, but it becomes even more important for ecommerce content. Here’s how to apply this with a focus on ecommerce.

Start by identifying the intent behind your main keyword. In ecommerce, this often revolves around transactional or commercial investigation intents. If users are ready to buy (“transactional”), your content should guide them toward purchasing. If they’re still researching (“commercial investigation”), provide comparisons, reviews, or detailed product information.

Look for related keyphrases that match these intents. Use tools like the Semrush integration in Yoast SEO to find variations that potential customers might use. For a keyword like “buy running shoes online,” related phrases could include “discount running shoes,” “running shoes with free shipping,” or “best price running shoes.”

In the Yoast SEO Related Keyphrases interface, the different intents will be color-coded using Semrush’s system:

  • C (yellow): Commercial intent
  • N (purple): Navigational intent
  • I (blue): Informational intent
  • T (green): Transactional intent

Examine search results for the keyphrases you’ve found to see what ecommerce sites are doing. Pay attention to product pages, reviews, and comparison guides that rank well. This helps you understand what customers expect and how you can differentiate your offerings.

Incorporate these keyphrases naturally into your product descriptions, category pages, and blog posts. Make sure the content answers potential buyer questions and highlights unique selling points. Include clear calls to action to drive purchases, especially for transactional intent.

If you focus well on search intent, you can create content that improves SEO and enhances the shopping experience. Ultimately, you want higher conversions and better customer satisfaction.

the interface for yoast seo's related keyphrases tool with search intent insights by semrush
Yoast SEO shows search intent insights powered by Semrush

Conclusion on search intent for SEO

It’s crucial to ensure that your content fits the terms people are searching for and your audience’s search intent. Ensure your post or page is informational when people seek information. Be the first result when someone searches for your company name. Provide content that helps people make an informed decision while still investigating their options. But lead people to your sales pages if they want to buy one of your products.

Read more: Keyword research: the ultimate guide »

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Keyword Golden Ratio: How to find keywords you can rank for in 48 hours

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Do you want to find keywords you can rank for in Google in the top 50 (or better) in a few days? You can use a data-driven method called…

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15 best SEO books that are worth reading in 2024

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Staying ahead in the world of SEO requires continuous learning, and what better way than through some of the best SEO books on the market? Whether you’re a beginner…

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What is programmatic SEO & how does it work?

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It’s no secret that a good SEO strategy is a must for any business looking to attract its target audience through organic search. However, scaling a business with a…

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7 Best SaaS SEO Agencies For Pipeline Growth

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There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all SEO strategy for SaaS companies. The best SaaS SEO agencies will take the time to learn your business inside out and adapt their services to your goals.

Read on to find out what else separates the best from the rest, along with our recommendations for the top SaaS SEO agencies in today’s market.

How to Choose the Best SaaS SEO Company

Choosing the best SaaS SEO agency comes down to how well it can meet your requirements for factors like:

  • Services offered
  • Results they’ve delivered
  • Ability to scale services
  • Experience in your industry
  • Reporting and analytics provided
  • Pricing and deliverables
  • Discovery process

Ultimately, no single agency is a good fit for every business. But it’s worth understanding what separates the wheat from the chaff for each factor so you can choose the best agency for your needs.

Services

Effective SaaS SEO hinges on a comprehensive approach that usually includes:

  • Full-funnel keyword research
  • Competitive analysis
  • Product-led content creation
  • Digital PR and authoritative link building
  • Technical audits and fixes
  • Performance reporting and optimizations

If you hire a full-service agency, you should get all of the above (and then some).

The best full-service SaaS SEO agencies will likely go above and beyond by also focusing on other areas, such as:

  • Aligning SEO and paid search strategies
  • Conversion rate optimization
  • Thought leadership development
  • Programmatic SEO opportunities to help scale content output and lead generation

In saying this, if you only need a specific service from the list above, a full-stack agency may be overkill. That’s where specialists or consultants are a better fit for some projects. For instance, content production is often a significant bottleneck that you can scale much easier if you outsource it to a dedicated SaaS content agency.

Specialist Agencies Full-Service Agencies
Ideal if you:
– Already have some in-house resources
– Need a specific skills gap filled
– Want to scale one area of your marketing quickly		 Ideal for:
– Avoiding the risk of over-hiring
– Scaling at a comfortable pace
– Leveraging experts in multiple areas
– Streamlining communications across campaigns and channels

Results

All decent SEO agencies showcase their results somehow, usually by publishing case studies. But the best SaaS SEO agencies have case studies that connect specific actions to tangible business results, like improvements in:

  • New trial sign-ups
  • Demos booked
  • Marketing and sales qualified leads
  • Cost-per-lead
  • Closed deals
  • Revenue

While SEO-specific metrics, like rankings and traffic, are a good leading indicator of campaign performance, they don’t show bottom-line value. So, ideally, you should look beyond these metrics and scope out the tangible impact on core business objectives instead.

For example, here’s a SaaS SEO case study showcasing the approach, services delivered, and the growth in SQLs.

Scale

Whether you’ve decided to hire a specialist or a full-service agency, their ability to scale services to match your pace is crucial.

In your decision-making process, assess how well an agency might be able to adapt to the future needs of your business.

Consider things like:

  • What size companies have they worked with?
  • Are the services delivered in a fixed package or a flexible arrangement that you can scale up or down as needed?
  • How big is the team, and how well might they handle sudden influxes of new projects during busy times?

The best agencies will be able to scale with you well into the future.

Industry experience

Look for agencies with extensive experience working with other SaaS companies.

They need to implicitly understand just how different SaaS is from eCommerce or other types of business models. Many generalist agencies that work with all types of businesses don’t have this understanding and lean on cookie-cutter strategies for all clients.

Reporting

Reporting is a critical piece of any SEO service. It’s how you can keep an agency accountable for the services and results they’re delivering.

All good agencies deliver reporting from analytics tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or SEO tools like Ahrefs. The best agencies also align these reports to the metrics you track in-house via your CRM. Leveraging this mix of reporting technology will give you a complete picture of campaign performance and business impact, from rankings and traffic to leads and revenue.

If an agency doesn’t mention business metrics like qualified leads, demos booked, or cost per lead in its case studies, it’s likely they don’t track or report on these. It never hurts to ask if they can report on the metrics that matter most to you during your initial discussions. Or, even better, ask for examples of how they track pipeline impact with other SaaS clients.

Pricing

When looking for the best SaaS SEO services, pricing can be an arbitrary factor. For instance, which scenario is better?

A. You hire a cost-effective agency. In 12 months, you’ve barely broken even on the service.
B. You hire a premium agency. In 12 months, they’ve delivered 2x return on investment.

In our book, option B is always better, no matter how big your investment is. In saying this, there is a point of diminishing returns with SEO, as with many other services. That is, there’s a point where spending more money won’t get you proportionally better results. So, you need to find a balance.

To work with most quality agencies, plan a monthly budget in the mid-high 4-figure or low 5-figure range as a starting point. If you’re growing fast and can afford to put more resources behind an engagement, aim for low to mid 5-figures per month for an agency that can scale with you.

The way we like to explain pricing to our clients is through the payback period. Often, a client can choose a lower engagement pricing tier that simply means we’ll work slower through the deliverables compared to our higher tiers. Essentially, you can achieve the same output, and likely results, for a similar price point on both engagement tiers. On higher tiers the client is paying more in the initial months, but also reaches ROI+ faster.

For example: One SaaS company chooses a $5,000/mo. engagement for 12 months to hit its organic growth goal. Another SaaS business chooses a $10,000/mo. engagement for 6 months to hit the same goal. The investment amount is the same, but the second company reach its goal, or payback period, faster. The decision between the two will often come down to risk tolerance, which should be addressed on the discovery call..

Discovery call

The discovery call is a great opportunity to vet your shortlist of agencies.

Most agencies will book a call to get to know your business and needs. It’s how they go about the call that makes all the difference.

During the call, consider these questions:

  • Has the agency researched your business, competitors and industry?
  • Did the agency provide any valuable insights on the call?
  • Did the agency explain how their process will meet your business needs?
  • What capacity can the agency operate in – strategic partner, extension of team, full-service?
  • How does the agency show business impact?

7 Best SaaS SEO Agencies

You now know how to evaluate the best SaaS SEO agencies. Here’s a list of the best in the market.

And yes, of course, my agency is on it 😉

But as mentioned above, no agency’s an ideal fit for every business out there. We specialize in integrated search marketing strategies for SaaS brands. The other agencies on this list offer a different take, but are also reputable.

Either way, we’re confident you’ll find the ideal partner for your needs below.

Virayo – Full Service B2B SaaS SEO and Google Ads Agency

Virayo B2B SaaS SEO agency

Notable clients: Truckstop, Brandfolder, SPOTIO, Cedreo

Clutch rating: 4.9

Virayo has proven track record of helping industry-leading B2B SaaS companies scale organic traffic, qualified lead volume and ARR, with its repeatable 7-step search marketing framework.

The agency has a selective client intake process, only taking on 1-2 new clients per month that it believes it can help scale, and is invested in growth.

Services Offered

  • Technical SEO
  • Content Audits
  • Keyword Strategy
  • Content Production
  • Content Optimization
  • Link Building
  • Analytics and Reporting
  • QBRs

Results

Testimonial

“Over the last two years, Virayo has helped grow our organic traffic from around 6,000 organic visits per month to over 70,000 organic visits per month. More importantly, organic traffic is now the number one driver of new trial signups for our business.”

– Charlotte Morineau, CMO, Cedreo

Robbie Richards SEO Consultant

Book a call with me

If you’re interested in learning how my agency, Virayo, can help your SaaS business achieve its growth targets, schedule a 1:1 discovery call with me.

Schedule Call

Powered By Search – B2B SaaS Marketing Agency

B2B SaaS Marketing Agency

Notable clients: Cloudways, CallRail, Basecamp, Click funnels, VMware

Powered by Search specializes in helping mid-market and mature B2B SaaS companies achieve unstoppable growth through its Predictable Growth Method. The agency focuses on scaling demos, trials, and sales, ensuring clients hit their revenue and pipeline targets efficiently.

Services Offered

  • SEO
  • PPC
  • Paid Social Media Marketing
  • Content Marketing
  • Full-Funnel Marketing Strategies

Results

  • Generated $11.1M in SEO Pipeline for a Data Privacy SaaS.
  • Delivered 135% of Paid Ads Pipeline Target for a CyberSec SaaS.
  • Doubled MQL to SQL Conversion with ABM for Named Accounts.

Testimonial

“I 100% recommend Powered By Search. They’ve completely transformed our paid media strategy. The results are incredible and we’re extremely happy with them.”

— Jill McCarville, VP Marketing, iWave

Kalungi – Full-Service B2B SaaS Marketing Agency

B2B SaaS Marketing Agency

Notable clients: FleetRunner, Fraxion, Degrees of Change, Beezy, CPGVision

Kalungi offers “Growth-as-a-Service” for B2B SaaS ventures, scaling with their clients’ needs to increase speed and achieve ambitious growth goals. Specializing in outsourced marketing, Kalungi uses a proven playbook to support software entrepreneurs needing more time or expertise to build an in-house team.

Services Offered

  • Fractional CMO Services
  • Full-Stack Marketing Team
  • SEO and Content Creation
  • Paid Media
  • CRO
  • Branding Design
  • Web Development
  • HubSpot Management

Results

  • Boosted Patch’s MQLs by 1500%
  • Sourced $4.7M in pipeline for CPGvision
  • Enhanced CCD Health’s MQLs by 750% with full-service engagement

Testimonial

“Not only does Kalungi have the experience and expertise, they have the people to execute everything from establishing positioning and messaging to building websites and SEO. They’re an all-in-one solution.”

— Jon Parrish, CEO and Founder, Patch

Directive Consulting – SaaS Performance Marketing Agency

SaaS Performance Marketing Agency

Notable clients: Uber Freight, Snap Inc., Amazon, Calendly, Supermetrics

Clutch rating: 4.8

Directive Consulting excels in performance marketing and leverages a comprehensive customer generation methodology. Trusted by some of the world’s largest tech brands, Directive has driven over $1 billion in client revenue in the last decade. Their integrated approach combines Paid Media, SEO, Lifecycle Marketing, and more to meet growth goals efficiently and predictably.

Services Offered

  • Paid Media (Search, Social, Programmatic)
  • Content Marketing & SEO
  • Integrated Strategy Development
  • Marketing Operations Optimization
  • Creative Design & Video Production

Results

  • Generated over $1B in revenue for clients.
  • Trusted by 200+ tech companies.
  • Architected growth for major brands like Adobe and Amazon.

Testimonial

“Directive is our trusted performance marketing agency that really covers everything from paid media all the way to strategy. From day one, they helped us look at the right metrics that made sense to enable growth efficiency, and they gave us a good base for what we should be looking at going forward.”

— Jose Bormey, Head of Digital Marketing, Manta

SimpleTiger – SEO, PPC and Web Design for SaaS Companies

SimpleTiger SEM and web design for SaaS companies

Notable clients: CleverTap, Chargify, credit.com, MAXIO, Bitly, Jotform

Clutch rating: 5.0

SimpleTiger uses a proprietary AI-empowered methodology to drive demand and convert customers. It offers clients keyword data intelligence, content optimization to target buyers at every stage of the buying journey, and holistic marketing efforts across organic and paid channels for maximum efficiency.

Services Offered

  • SEO
  • PPC (Paid Search & Social)
  • Content Marketing
  • Link Building
  • Web Design

Results

  • 597% increase in organic traffic to the primary page target for Jotform.
  • 1200% increase in first-page keyword rankings for Gelato.

Testimonial

“SimpleTiger fits their services around your specific SEO needs. After working with them, I am confident in my own SEO knowledge and can help my team out for quick decisions and questions.”

— Andy Jiang, Success Engineer at Segment

Codeless – SaaS Content Production Agency

SaaS content production agency

Notable clients: monday.com, Kissmetrics, BetterBuys, Crazy Egg, WordStream, Kinsta

Clutch rating: 4.8

Codeless delivers high-quality content that achieves top rankings, specializing in SEO and content marketing for competitive industries. Their “Pillar and Post” strategy, combined with expert vertical writers and rigorous optimization processes, ensures that content reaches and resonates with the target audience, driving traffic, leads, and sales effectively.

Services Offered

  • SEO Content Strategy
  • Content Production and Management
  • SEO Advisory for SaaS brands

Results

  • Increased keyword visibility by 96.15% for Remote.
  • Boosted new organic keywords for Miro by 28,000 with 2,400 achieving 1st page rankings.

Testimonial

“By far the best decision we’ve made.”
— Comment from monday.com highlighting the impactful results from Codeless’s content strategies.

Single Grain – Digital Marketing Agency for SaaS Companies

Single Grain SaaS digital marketing agency

Notable clients: Amazon, Uber, Lyft, Salesforce, AirBnB, Crunchbase

Clutch rating: 4.8

Single Grain is a full-service digital marketing agency focused on helping companies expand their business through strategic and effective digital marketing solutions. They excel in search engine marketing, and various other digital ad channels. Their team of expert marketers uses a data-driven approach to ensure the best return on investment, constantly innovating to keep their clients ahead of the curve.

Services Offered

  • SEO & Content Marketing
  • PPC: Google & Facebook Advertising
  • Conversion Rate Optimization
  • SaaS Marketing
  • Paid Social (across platforms)
  • Programmatic SEO

Results

  • Reduced cost per click by 41.37% while increasing leads for Nextiva.
  • Achieved a 44% increase in organic sessions for BatteriesPlus.

Testimonial

“Their expertise has helped Nextiva grow its brand and overall business
The Single Grain team has been instrumental in providing us with forward-thinking, growth-impacting marketing support. Their expertise has helped Nextiva grow its brand and overall business.”
— Yaniv Masjedi, CMO, Nextiva

Choose the right agency for your SaaS business

Hiring a SaaS SEO agency is a big investment for most companies. Getting it wrong can be costly.

Use the evaluation criteria above to shortlist agency candidates, and then schedule discovery calls with each one to better gauge the right partner for your business.

Robbie Richards SEO Consultant

Book a call with me

If you’re interested in learning how my agency, Virayo, can help your SaaS business achieve its growth targets, schedule a 1:1 discovery call with me.

Schedule Call

The post 7 Best SaaS SEO Agencies For Pipeline Growth appeared first on Robbie Richards.

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