The biggest lies they told you about SEO

“SEO works for growth-stage and matured companies only. You won't get results if you compete on the SERPs as a startup.”

The above is what we’ve all been told over the years.

But guess what?

It’s far from the truth!

Let me tell you this…

Even though there’s a first-mover advantage in SEO, there are tons of opportunities for the UNDERDOGS. You, as a startup, have the potential to succeed with this marketing channel.

If you’re new to the industry or your niche, you can still come late to the party and steal the show.

Yes,  you read that right!

Of course, for that to happen, you must know what you’re doing and put in the work.

In today’s email, I want to dispel the biggest lies about SEO you might have heard as a startup founder.

The goal is to inform you about this and share what you could do to drive signups, not just traffic, from your investment in SEO.

Before we continue, here’s a message from this week’s sponsor.

Back to today’s newsletter…

What are those common lies about SEO that you shouldn’t believe as a SaaS startup?

Let’s dive in.

1) You can’t rank number one on Google as an underdog 

• HubSpot

• Zapier

• Buffer

• Ahrefs

• Moz

• Backlinko

• Semrush

What do these websites have in common?

They have achieved tremendous success with SEO, and their names will always pop up whenever you search for anything (most keywords) in their niche.

Here is why…

They’ve invested time and resources into SEO, spanning decades and millions of dollars.

Take Moz as an example; the company has been around since 2004 (approximately 20 years today).

Does this mean that outranking them on Google isn’t possible?

Well, this is what most people believe, and the reason is simple.

Experience has shown that it is challenging to rank number one on Google for competitive terms (especially if you’re just starting).

So, most startups just assume that investing in SEO in a competitive niche is only a waste of time and effort.

But this isn’t the reality if you follow what I will tell you next, which is…

Instead of competing with the goliaths in your niche for popular keywords, create and dominate your own unknown keywords.

This is a realistic and sure-fire way to occupy the top spot on Google in your niche.

Using the SEO niche as an example, one of the popular topics in this niche is “internal linking.”

So, if you search the keyword “internal linking” in Google, this is what you’d most likely find:

As you can see, the top websites in the SEO niche, such as Semrush, Moz, Ahrefs, Yoast, Backlinko, etc., occupy the top spots for this particular keyword.

Let’s say you’re an underdog in this niche who just launched an internal linking tool.

Would it make sense to try outranking them for this keyword?

The simple answer is No.

Instead, you should identify long-tail variations of this keyword, especially after interviewing your customers.

Here are some examples I came up with:

• How to add internal links in WordPress

• Internal linking plugin

• Internal linking tools

• how many internal links is too many

• Internal linking audit 

And guess what?

We’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible.

Using “Internal linking plugin” as an example, here’s what the SERPs look like:

So, what do you observe?

Popular SEO tools don’t target this keyword.

Instead, websites like Link Whisper, Content Powered, WP Beginner, Internal Link Juicer, etc. occupy the top spots.

This is just one example of why ranking number one on Google as an underdog is possible.

2) Zero volume keyword means no one is searching for it on Google 

We published this article on a client’s website in August 2023.

So far, it has driven 4,800 organic traffic visitors in the last year.

Which is about 400 website visitors per month.

This means that this keyword attracted at least 13 potential customers to my client’s website every single day.

Here is the interesting part… 

According to most SEO tools, this keyword has zero search volume, which means that no one is searching for it on Google.

Now the big question is…

Why is a keyword with zero search volume driving organic traffic in hundreds per month?

The reason is simple… 

The keyword targets a pain point that our target audience has based on our insights and knowledge about them.

Now, you may be wondering…

Does this mean the SEO tools are lying?

Well, I won’t attribute it to that.

Instead, it shows that you shouldn’t follow everything an SEO tool says hook, line, and sinker.

The era of relying on an SEO tool for keyword research is gone.

Now, it’s time to focus on understanding your target audience’s pain points and mapping them to keywords that someone could be searching for on Google.

If you identify a keyword after following this process, you should target it, even if the SEO tool says it has zero search volume.

3) Organic traffic is the endgame of SEO 

Here’s the traditional SEO model:

• Target high-volume keywords

• Build lots and lots of backlinks

• Generate tens and hundreds of thousands of website traffic

• Copy the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

• Don’t talk about your product in blog posts

• Use gated content to get your reader’s email address

• Prioritize top-of-the-funnel content

And many more.

Truth is…

While these tactics worked well in 2010, they’re no longer effective in 2024.

Take organic traffic generation as an example.

Most founders erroneously think that you must generate hundreds of thousands or millions of organic traffic visitors before you can drive ROI from SEO.

This is why they focus on targeting keywords with high search volume, even if it has zero buying intent.

While these keywords have their place in SEO, you must realize that it’s not the game you should play as a SaaS startup.

In most cases, these keywords generate a large number of website visitors but cannot convert them into leads, signups, demos, paying customers, etc.

In reality:

Focus on driving the right traffic with the right intent and doing what is necessary on your website to convert them into signups and paying customers.

With this, you stand a better chance of building a revenue-generating SaaS startup.

Let’s do some Maths to drive the points home.

Say you run a startup in the “help desk” niche with an average monthly price of $99.

For your startup to reach $10,000 MRR per month, you need about 101 paying customers (all things being equal).

Assuming you’re starting entirely from scratch and your goal is to reach this MRR goal within 6 months, you will need at least 17 paying customers every month for the next six months to achieve that goal.

If you were to focus majorly on SEO, how many organic traffic visitors would you need monthly to achieve this goal?

Say you generate about 10,000 organic traffic visitors monthly with a conversion rate of 5% to user signups, you’ll get at least 500 signups per month.

And converting about 5% of these signups into paying customers translates to about 25 paying customers per month.

With this calculation, you’ll reach about 150 paying customers in six months, which will help you exceed your MRR goal in six months (all things being equal).

Of course, many factors might affect your results, but this gives you an idea of what’s possible.

To recap… 

To drive signups from organic search as a SaaS startup, you must ditch the traditional SEO model and embrace the underdog SEO playbook.

Hope you found this helpful and valuable.

To your startup success,

Shehu AbdulGaniy 

Founder, Your Content Mart

P.S: I’m launching The SaaS SEO Insights Referral Program next week. Get ready to be rewarded for sharing this newsletter with your friends and colleagues.

P.S.S: If you learned something new from this week’s email, please invite your colleagues and friends to join The SaaS SEO Insights today through this link. Counting on your support 🤝.