B2B SaaS Content Marketing: Content Strategy + Channels

B2B SaaS Content Marketing Explained

B2B SaaS content marketing is any strategic approach used by businesses to attract and engage potential users for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product. What makes B2B SaaS content stand out from other industries is that it focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a highly targeted audience that falls under an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

The primary goal of B2B SaaS content marketing is to drive profitable customer action by being a source of practical information and building brand awareness. This is achieved through various channels like social media, webinars, case studies, whitepapers and blogs.

By delivering a consistent stream of high-quality content to potential users, B2B SaaS companies are aiming to establish themselves not only as thought leaders within their industry, but also convert leads into paying users.

What’s different about B2B SaaS marketing?

B2B SaaS products are more complex typically and have longer sales cycles than B2C products. The longer the sales cycle, the higher levels of trust need to be built up for customers to make purchase decisions. This means the approach to marketing needs to be focused on educating, nurturing and establishing a connection with potential customers.

On top of this, B2B SaaS content marketing has to sell not only the software, but also the support behind the software as well. Users need to be confident in the software’s capabilities to improve their business and the support systems needed to guide them through implementation.

Benefits of SaaS Content Marketing

Content marketing has massive advantages for SaaS companies at every stage of the buyer journey. Here are some key benefits you should keep in mind:

Customer Education: Content marketing should educate customers at every stage of the buyer journey. Marketing specific to SaaS focuses on creating valuable and informative content that drives readers through the sales funnel. This is done through in-depth explanations, tutorials and blogs that showcase specific features of the software. The bottom line here is that SaaS content marketing should provide practical insights and real-life examples that are relevant to the reader.

Building Trust: Content is a powerful tool for building trust among potential customers, allowing SaaS companies to demonstrate their industry expertise and knowledge to establish credibility. By directly addressing pain points and needs, SaaS content instils trustworthiness in the brand.

Cheaper Customer Acquisition: SaaS content marketing can lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) in several ways: improving brand visibility, attracting qualified leads and new signups through organic growth channels.

Community Building: The right types of content will build and nurture a community of users by being a point of discussion. By consistently providing valuable content, SaaS companies can become a go-to resource for industry and niche-specific information. This not only helps attract potential users but also establishes credibility with existing users.

Lead Nurturing: Content marketing is a powerful tool for nurturing leads, as it allows you to engage with potential customers at every stage of the buying process. The first step in nurturing leads is to create brand awareness, educating your target audience about the benefits of your software. Once you’ve captured their attention, keeping them engaged with practical information like use cases or success stories will position you as viable solution for them.

Reduces Churn: Content helps establish strong relationships between a SaaS and its users. When users feel connected to a brand and receive ongoing support from them, they’re much more likely to continue using the service. You can reduce churn by understanding the needs and pain points of different user segments then creating content tailored towards them.

Customer Communication: Being in constant contact with your users is a surefire way to build long-lasting relationships. Communicating your new product and feature updates is an easy way to stay top of mind with your existing user base.

Marketing Funnel Stages

The standard marketing funnel, sometimes called the sales funnel, consists of 6 stages, each with its own nuances and types of content that performs better. It acts as a visual representation of the customer journey from brand awareness to making a purchase. 

  1. Awareness: In the first stage of the funnel, businesses aim to create brand awareness within their target audience through various channels like advertising, social media and SEO.
  2. Interest: Once a potential customer is aware of your brand, they are in the interest stage. It’s here that they show interest in your products or services and begin researching more about them.
  3. Consideration: Potential customers have shown a level of interest in your brand and are considering making a purchase. It’s here where they begin to compare your brand to competitors’ offerings. 
  4. Intent: The potential customer has made up their mind about choosing your product or service but still needs an extra push to convert into a paying customer (or free signup in the case of freemium SaaS).
  5. Evaluation: During this stage of the funnel, potential customers are carefully evaluating their options before making a final decision.
  6. Purchase: The final stage of the marketing funnel, where a potential customer becomes a paying customer.
content marketing funnel

Categorising these 6 stages into top, middle and bottom of the funnel allows marketers to tailor their strategies according to each stage.

At the top of the funnel, you have the Awareness and Interest stages. This is when potential customers become aware of your brand and don’t know much about your offering yet.

In the middle of the funnel are the Consideration and Interest stages, where potential customers are starting to show interest in your brand and begin comparing it with competitors.

Finally, at the bottom of the funnel are the Evaluation and Purchase stages, where potential customers have gathered enough information they need to make a final purchase decision.

How to Prioritise Content Creation for B2B SaaS

While it may seem logical to prioritise top of funnel content so that your brand reaches the widest audience, you can actually drive signups quicker by focusing on bottom of funnel content first. This is because potential customers in the bottom of funnel stages are more likely to convert into paying customers with the right information.

When leveraging social media and SEO for B2B SaaS signups, bottom of funnel content helps attract qualified leads. These are potential users who have already done some research and are actively looking for a solution that meets their specific needs.

how to prioritize SaaS content production

Content Formats for Each Stage of the Funnel

B2B SaaS companies in particular should use different content formats for different stages of the marketing funnel because it allows them to more effectively target and engage potential users at each stage of their buying journey.

Bottom of Funnel Content Types

We put the bottom of the funnel first because that’s where B2B SaaS companies should put their initial focus: bringing in conversions from those who are ready to make purchase decisions. At this stage, targeted content allows potential users to experience the product first-hand, imagine what it’s like implementing it into their business and make a well-informed decision before committing to a signup. Persuasive writing techniques should be your best friend when producing bottom of funnel content.

Product Pages: Product pages are excellent real estate for conversions since they’re your primary landing pages. They play a crucial role in the bottom of funnel content for SaaS companies because they are designed specifically to convert visitors into (paying) users. For many, this will be the first point of contact for potential users that have already gone through the awareness and consideration stages of the marketing funnel. 

Providing detailed information about your software makes product pages one of the highest converting pieces of content you can develop. You’ll want to include things like features, benefits, pricing, customer reviews and access to case studies on your product pages. Basically, you’ll want to add any kind of information that helps potential users make an informed decision about whether or not your solution meets their needs.

product page example

Example: PixelCut.ai – Background Remover

Pricing Pages: If you were to organise your bottom of funnel content into its own funnel, pricing pages would be at the very bottom. Pricing pages often serve as the final step in the purchasing decision-making process. This is because pricing pages address one of the most important concerns for consumers: cost. At this point in the marketing funnel, potential users seek out specific details about pricing plans, features and benefits before signing up.

Pricing pages are a great place for SaaS companies to showcase their value proposition by highlighting unique features and benefits of their software. By clearly outlining what sets them apart from competitors, pricing pages are one of the most effective ways to communicate the value of your software. They also help build trust with potential customers by providing transparency. In the case of enterprise SaaS, pricing can be muddled and locked behind sales calls. Offering your pricing upfront on a pricing page will help establish your SaaS as trustworthy.

pricing page example

Example: Instantly.ai – Pricing Page

Use Case Pages: Use case pages are an effective type of bottom of funnel content because they provide potential users with a clear understanding of how your SaaS can solve their problems or meet their needs. This type of content is especially useful for converting potential users into signups because it demonstrates how your solution works and how it benefits them specifically. Use case pages demonstrate your ability to solve real-world problems in a level of detail that builds trust, making them more likely to convert to paying users.

use case page example

Example: customer.io FinTech Use Case page

“Alternative to” Pages: Comparing your SaaS directly to established players in your industry is an underrated way to target users actively searching for greener grass. These users are typically closer to making a purchasing decision than others and have already gone through the awareness and consideration stages of the buyer’s journey. Writing an unbiased comparison of the market as a one-stop comparison resource for users in the decision-making stage allows them to easily evaluate their options and choose the one best suited for their needs. Hopefully yours is best in category, as this type of content will only work if your SaaS is actually better than others. If that’s the case, expect a high conversion rate from your “alternative to” pages!

alternative to page example

Example: ClickUp’s Figma alternatives blog

Buying Process Pages: When a company is actively seeking out the best software solution within a specific category, they’re already at the bottom of the marketing funnel and are ready to make a purchase decision. These types of pages allow SaaS companies to showcase their unique features, benefits and advantages over their competitors. What makes these pages especially powerful is that you can include social proof when explaining your SaaS to further convince potential users to choose your software.

buying process page example

Example: Publer’s LinkedIn automation software blog

Middle of Funnel Content Types

As potential users move down the funnel and are aware of your SaaS, more in-depth content to provide meaningful insights can be used. It’s at this stage that your content should focus on demonstrating how your software solves their pain points, pushing them closer towards making a purchase decision.

Product Tour Pages: Product tours provide potential users with a much deeper understanding of features and benefits of your software. These pages will typically include video explainer videos or interactive demonstrations that allow companies to see the product in action and get a feel for how it works. Product tours are almost essential for complex products because they can be difficult for customers to fully understand through text-based content alone. Tours are also a great place to showcase customer testimonials, case studies or use cases, which can help immensely with building trust.

product tour page example

Example: Chameleon’s interactive product tour page

Product Tutorial Pages: Tutorials and any form of technical documentation serve as a bridge between the initial awareness stage and the final decision-making stage of the buyer’s journey. This type of content helps educate potential customers about specific features, implementation and functionality of the software, giving them a better understanding of how exactly it can solve their problems.

product tutorial page example

Example: Willful’s how to write your will in Canada blog

Case Study Pages: Case studies provide tangible evidence of the value and effectiveness of your software. This type of content showcases real-world examples and success stories from existing users, giving potential users a full picture of how your SaaS will benefit their business. Case study pages are where you can include specific details and metrics that show how you impact them. This includes things like cost savings, time savings and ROI. 

case study page example

Example: Content Beta’s case study page

Interactive Tools: Offering free tools on your website allows potential users to actively engage in your software, providing a better understanding of the bigger picture: how your software works and its potential impact on their bottom line. Interactive tools give hands-on experience and allows companies to see the value of your software in action. Calculator tools that showcase the time or cost savings associated with your SaaS are a great starting point for those looking to get their feet wet.

interactive tool example

Example: HubSpot’s free website grader tool

Top of Funnel Content Types

At the top of the funnel, where customers are still becoming aware of your SaaS, visual and easily digestible content will help grab their attention and generate interest. This type of content is typically tailored towards garnering social shares to increase brand awareness and reach a large audience.

Ultimate Guides: Writing the most comprehensive as possible guide to a specific topic serves as a go-to resource for those just beginning to research a particular topic. Ultimate guides attract a broad range of people and a small percentage of them will be within your ICP. General guides like this are an opportunity to showcase expertise so that your ICP will keep you in mind when they’re closer to making a purchasing decision. You can also use this type of content as a place to educate potential users about your software and its benefits, so long as you aren’t being too salesy. Being subtle about product features as solutions to potential pain points will help build your credibility and keep you top of mind.

ultimate guide example

Example: Digital Marketing Institute’s ultimate influencer marketing guide

How-To Guides: These guides provide valuable information to potential users about how to solve a problem or achieve a specific goal using your software. This level of brand positioning can be powerful when executed correctly. When someone has a problem, they seek out solutions through search engines. Writing content geared towards helping solve problems will allow you to reach new audiences and introduce them to your SaaS.

how to page example

Example: Spacebar Collective’s how to outsource link building guide

Listicles: List format blog content is great for top of funnel customers because they’re easy to consume and skim. Providing bite-sized information that’s easily digestible with a scroll captures the attention of busy professionals who might not have the time to read long-form content. This also makes them more shareable than other forms of content, bringing in a wider net of  potential users.

listicle page example

Example: HootSuite’s content marketing tools listicle

Thought Leadership: B2B SaaS companies often operate in complex and rapidly-changing fields, so customers are constantly looking for guidance and expertise to make more informed purchase decisions. Thought leadership pieces can showcase your understanding of the industry, trends and challenges faced by other companies. This helps position your brand as leaders in the space. On top of this, thought leadership pieces are highly shareable and can attract a wider readership beyond just potential users. The network effect can compound, putting your SaaS in the eyes of your ICP.

thought leadership example

Example: Future’s How AI Copywriters Are Changing SEO piece

5 Growth Channels to Earn New Signups

Instead of relying on a single growth channel, B2B SaaS companies should diversify their growth efforts so their reach and potential isn’t limited. By using multiple channels, companies can tap into their ICP and increase brand awareness among a wider audience.

Using a variety of growth channels can also help diversify the types of users they bring in. For example, enterprise-level companies are more likely to convert off of SEO than they are from organic social media. Just because one channel works for a certain ICP does not mean it will work for all segments. Additionally, B2B SaaS companies can gain valuable data and insights into their market by tracking performance of individual channels to see which is most effective in acquiring new signups and to see which channels have the best retention as well. This data-driven approach allows you to optimise your content marketing efforts and improve your overall ROI.

SEO (Organic Search)

Unlike paid growth channels or even social media, SaaS SEO brings you new signups through owned channels: your website and its digital assets. By producing content for every stage of the customer acquisition funnel, your SaaS will be in a good position to earn organic signups.

B2B SaaS companies are uniquely positioned to leverage SEO as a growth channel because of the possibilities of websites they can earn backlinks from. Not only are the doors wide open for blogs in their specific software niche, but B2B SaaS companies can also get backlinks from software directories, entrepreneurship blogs and technology websites. 

Although it can sometimes be more expensive to build links for SaaS companies because website admins will charge more than other industries (food and travel for example), there’s a wider net cast where you can hit higher volumes of quality links easier.

The other piece of the SEO puzzle you should take into consideration is blog content production. Google finds it hard to consider a website with less than 30 pages an authority on a topic, so it’s important that you build up a base library of content related to your industry. Showcasing your expertise in blog content will build a topical map for your website, signalling to Google that you know what you’re talking about and others should trust you.

Paid Social

Paid ads on social media are a great way to gain immediate traction, earning new signups by targeting a specific audience, generating leads and increasing brand awareness.

Running ads on LinkedIn allows businesses to target their ads towards demographics, interests and job titles. This targeting ability is especially powerful for B2B SaaS companies because you can reach decision-makers who are more likely to be interested in your software.

If you have an existing email list or large enough user base, you might want to consider lookalike audience advertising on Facebook and Instagram. 

Paid Search

Paid ads on search engines like Google ensure your brand is displayed to relevant audiences who are actively searching for solutions for their business. By bidding on bottom of funnel keywords, your ads are placed above all organic search results, bringing in qualified traffic to your landing page.

Another basic, yet effective strategy is to bid on your competitors’ branded keywords. For example, Monday.com places their ads for the keyword “Trello.”

PPC content marketing for B2B SaaS

Organic Social

Although it takes some finesse, a bit of luck and plenty of patience, organic social media marketing is a good growth channel for your B2B SaaS because it’s cost-effective and helps build word of mouth. Unlike paid advertising channels, organic social media allows companies to reach your ICP through tailored messaging and content that directly appeals to potential signups.

If you’re looking to build your own community, social media is the place to do so. Performing well on social has a snowball effect on generating new signups. When your users engage with your posts and share them, it increases visibility beyond your own network and brings an influx of new signups from social referrals.

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to earn new signups in the B2B SaaS game. Referral leads are relatively cheap compared to other growth channels, yet convert at a higher rate than any other type of lead. The problem with referral marketing is that it can be difficult to begin and can be quite inconsistent in terms of generating new leads. That’s why it works best as a supplementary SaaS content marketing channel, rather than a primary channel you rely on for signups.

If you’re looking to take full advantage of referrals as a growth channel, your best bet is to use referral software to automate your campaigns.

Final Thoughts

B2B SaaS content marketing is crucial for companies who want to take control of their own growth. By implementing content for each stage of the marketing funnel, SaaS companies are able to attract qualified leads that convert to signups. In doing so, they also learn to address pain points of their ICP and are able to position themselves as the solution to their problems. 

For those who are ready to grow their SaaS business, SEO is a great starting point because it’s cost-effective, can tackle the bottom of the funnel immediately and has various long-term benefits. Unlike paid advertising campaigns, which require ongoing funding, SEO is a channel that can be invested into over an initial 6 month campaign and then reassessed.

If you’re geared for growth and are ready to tackle SEO as a growth channel, contact us at Spacebar Collective today and we can put together a custom quote for your SaaS.

How to Outsource SEO Safely: Risk Mitigation + Saving Money

The Benefits of Outsourcing SEO

If your in-house marketing team doesn’t have a successful track record in using SEO for business growth, you should consider outsourcing an experienced SEO agency:

Here are some reasons why you should consider outsourcing SEO:

Time and Cost Savings: Outsourcing will be more cost-effective than handling SEO in-house because you won’t have to invest into hiring, training and managing additional staff. In addition to resources needed to onboard new employees, you’d also have to invest into developing in-house processes for SEO improvements, backlink building and content production. If you’re looking to take SEO seriously as a growth channel, it’s more efficient to hire an SEO agency because there are varied skill sets involved with ranking websites on Google that often cannot be tackled by a single person. We’ll get into the cost of hiring an in-house SEO later in this blog, but keep in mind that for optimal results, you’ll likely have to hire for multiple roles including a blog content writer, an editor, a link builder and/or an SEO specialist.

Lowered Risk: When it comes to SEO, there are 2 main deliverables to worry about: backlinks and content. Each of these comes with their own set of risks and outsourcing SEO mitigates that risk deftly. Building the wrong types of backlinks puts your website at risk of a manual penalty, potentially ruining your domain’s reputation, sometimes permanently. Producing content that doesn’t convert to new business is a risk of time and money, a common pitfall of those writing in-house. SEO agencies have processes in place to ensure quality and quantity in both of these aspects through risk mitigation best practices.

Scalability: When outsourcing SEO to an agency, you can easily scale the campaign up or down depending on your needs and available budget. This kind of flexibility allows you to optimise your SEO campaigns on the fly. If you did SEO in-house, it’s much harder to make these kinds of adjustments since you have staff who are locked into contracts. When outsourcing SEO, you should consider working month-to-month or locking into a small monthly budget so that you have the ability to scale campaigns with a variable budget. For instance, most SaaS SEO agencies are flexible working on a sliding scale budget, some months higher and some months lower than others. 

Quicker SEO Results: It shouldn’t come as a surprise that working with a team will bring you faster results than working with an individual. Since it’s more cost-effective to outsource SEO to an agency, your budget will go farther, resulting in more backlinks and more pieces of content than doing things in-house. Producing more content allows your site to rank for more keywords and building backlinks improves your site’s ranking for those keywords. So long as you keep up the quality, more is better in this case; you’ll be able to rank your site for keywords that convert faster. 

How Much Does an In-House SEO Cost?

According to Glassdoor, the average in-house SEO specialist makes $65,428 per year, or $5,452.33 per month. As we went over in our guide to outsourcing link building, the average link builder can only build 13-15 backlinks on average per month and in our guide to outsourcing blog writing, the average writer will produce 20 blog posts per month.

If you were to hire an in-house SEO, you can expect them to produce about half this rate for each deliverable because there’s only so much time in a day. 

SEO specialist salary GlassDoor screenshot

On the other hand, if you took that same budget of $65,428 per year and put it towards outsourcing SEO to an agency, you’d build more backlinks and have more blog content published on your site at a higher quality standard.

Preparing Your Site for an SEO Campaign

While a talented SEO agency should be able to fix up any technical issues with your website, there are some easy, foundational steps you can take on your own to save you money.

Indexability: Make sure your website is visible to Google and is being properly indexed. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and address any errors it identifies. If any of the suggestions here are too technical or out of your wheelhouse, take note of these changes and let the SEO agency handle it for you.

Accessibility: Making your website available for everyone through accessibility compliance will also make it easier for search engines to understand as well. Google puts value on the user experience, so this is an important aspect of any SEO campaign.

Easy Navigation: Navigating your website to any page should be easy and painless. For an optimal user experience, make sure that every page on your site is accessible within just 3 clicks. This means that all of your menus (header, footer, sidebar) should establish logical connections that guide visitors effortlessly to all the valuable content you have to offer. Tools like Screaming Frog can be used to get a visualisation of your website’s pages to identify any orphan pages that need better internal linking.

Outsourced SEO Options

Now that you understand the benefits of outsourcing SEO and know what should be done on your site beforehand, let’s go over how to outsource SEO to the pros.

There are 4 ways you can outsource your SEO:

Hiring a Freelance SEO: If there’s only a single area of SEO you’re struggling with, this is a great option because most freelancers are T-shaped in their skill set. This means they excel in a single area, while they coast by in other areas of understanding the basics. For example, a freelancer might be very strong in backlink building or content production or strategic planning.

Hiring a Full-Service Marketing Agency: Much like hiring a freelance SEO, full-service marketing agencies don’t typically excel in all areas. In fact, this is even more the case because SEO is just one area of marketing they provide services in, without specialisation. However, if you’re looking for an omnichannel approach, full-service marketing agencies will be your best bet. For example, if you want to take advantage of social media and SEO, this is a great option for you.

Hiring an SEO Agency: The most stress-free, straightforward way to outsource SEO. Hiring an SEO agency is relatively headache-free and hands-off throughout the entire process. Their exclusive focus on SEO means they have a lot to bring to the table in terms of delivering results. If you don’t have expertise in SEO, this is your best option because an SEO agency will bring the most to the table.

Hiring an SEO Consultant and an SEO Agency: While it sounds like the most expensive option on the list at first glance, it’s actually the most cost-effective option available. Hiring an SEO consultant to do an audit of your website and putting together a game plan going forward (keyword research and off-page SEO strategy) won’t break the bank, but will give you a solid foundation for hiring an SEO agency to execute. Outsourcing to an SEO agency after you’ve already done the strategic planning cuts down on the onboarding costs and is often the cheapest approach to SEO. Some of the easiest clients we’ve ever worked with started with a strong vision for their SEO (from a paid SEO audit) and we were able to deliver results for them by executing on their content strategy and building backlinks at scale.

What to Look For in an SEO Agency

Proven Experience: Ask to see case studies of successful SEO campaigns or at the very least screenshots that detail progress made for their clients or their portfolio of websites they operate. It’s also important that the agency has relevant experience to your business, so ask if they have proven experience within your niche or industry as well.

Pricing: Ideally, you’ll want to look for SEO agencies that cost less than hiring an in-house SEO. This isn’t too difficult to achieve, as the average contract size is typically somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 per month. This works out to being at most $60,000 per year, which is still cheaper than hiring an SEO specialist.

Transparency: Seek out SEO agencies that are transparent with how exactly they operate. What are the strategies they’re going to use to rank your website? Are they white hat, grey hat or black hat tactics? What do their processes look like for backlink building and content production? These are questions you should consider when looking for the right outsourcing partner.

Questions to Ask an SEO Agency Before Hiring

It’s crucial to ask the right questions when prospecting an SEO agency before outsourcing to them. It’s with these questions that you can make an informed decision to find an agency that meets your specific needs to hit your goals. Asking the right questions will allow you to gain insight into an agency’s expertise, their experience in your industry and their overall approach to SEO. 

By getting a basic understanding of the strategies and methodology they use, you can more fairly assess whether or not they have the necessary skills to earn search real estate for your business.

Here are some questions you can ask an SEO agency before hiring them. They should serve as a starting point to get a feel for their competency. It’s important to ask followup questions to each of these so you can get a more in-depth look at what they’re all about.

  1. What SEO strategies do you follow for your clients?
  2. How do you plan to adapt these strategies for my brand?
  3. What’s included in your average contract?
  4. How much involvement will you require from me?
  5. How will I track the progress of the SEO campaign?

Foundational Links: Building Your Website’s First Backlinks

Foundational Links Explained

Foundational links are the cornerstone of your backlink profile, the first initial backlinks that are built when your website is brand new. They are an essential step in every SEO campaign and allow your site to rank for low competition keywords and most importantly: your brand name.

Backlinks in general serve as votes of confidence from other websites, signalling to Google that your content is relevant and trustworthy. When a reputable website links to yours, search engines will view this as a signal of quality.

By building foundational links, you’ll be able to improve your website’s visibility and credibility on search engines. This results in improved rankings for your first pieces of content, your homepage and landing pages early on in your SEO journey.

It’s also important to note that the anchor text used in foundational links should follow a logical structure to establish your website as a topical authority in your niche. The focus keyword of your homepage is typically a high competition keyword that reflects your overall business, while the focus keywords of landing pages and initial blogs will typically be lower competition, since they’re easier to rank for. When selecting anchor text in foundational links, you should choose a variety of branded, keyword-rich and navigational (click here, learn more, etc.) text.

What’s the difference between foundational backlinks and regular backlinks?

While we’ll jump into the most common types of foundational links later in this blog, you’ll notice many similarities between foundational and regular backlinks. The main difference is the time when the backlinks are built. Foundational links are built at the start of an SEO campaign, often coinciding with a website launch or a rebrand. Standard backlink building tactics can be used to build foundational links, although there are types of foundational links that you won’t be using later on in SEO campaigns as well.

Types of Foundational Links

Having a diverse backlink profile is crucial for SEO because it accelerates the time it takes for Google to consider your website credible. When search engines crawl and index websites, they take into consideration the quality, quantity and relevance of backlinks pointing to a site. A diverse backlink profile will indicate that a website is being referenced by a variety of reputable sources.

Building foundational links from a variety of sources will help your chances of ranking early on in your SEO efforts.

Here are the 4 types of foundational links that we like to build for clients:

Business Directories: Directory backlinks don’t always pass link equity, but when they do, they really do. This is because most business directories are established websites with robust backlink profiles and authority on search engines. Business directories are also location or niche specific, which can help build your website’s trustworthiness. For example, if you were running a SaaS, it’d make sense to create profiles on software review sites like G2 Crowd and Capterra.

citation building example

Social Media Profiles: While social signals are not a ranking factor, it’s still important to claim your brand’s social media profiles at the start of an SEO campaign. While social media profile links won’t really move the needle when it comes to ranking for your focus keywords, it will flood the page 1 results for your branded terms. For example, if you search for “Spacebar Collective” on Google, our Linkedin Page and Twitter/X Profile are among the first results.

social profile backlinks

Guest Blogs: Writing new content as guest contributions for established blogs is a great way to build foundational links because you have complete control over the anchor text used. And as we’ve already mentioned, anchor text is important in building yourself up as a topical authority. Guest blogging is the link-building tactic you’ll likely continue well beyond your initial foundational links, as it’s one of the most consistent ways to build powerful backlinks.

Link Insertions (Niche Edits): Unlike guest blogs, link insertions are where your link is edited into existing content that’s already published on someone else’s website. Some would argue that link insertions are more powerful than guest blogs because Google has already indexed these pages and already ranks them for keywords in your niche.This is especially true if the page you’re getting a link insertion from is getting meaningful search traffic. You’ll not only earn a relevant backlink to your site, but you’ll also gain referral traffic from their article. 

3 Link-Building Tactics for New Websites

Citation Building: Citations are any mentions of your business details and link to your website on business directories, review sites and social media platforms. These are considered foundational links because you build them just once when you launch your website. If you’re a brick and mortar, you might want to look into local citation building, which will help your business appear on Google Maps, Apple Maps and other local search engines. If you’re a startup, you’ll want to build citations on websites like CrunchBase and G2.

Cold Email Outreach: Sending cold emails is one of the most effective ways to build backlinks from guest blogs and link insertions. It all starts with link prospecting, the process of identifying websites most likely to accept guest contributions. Once you have your list of target websites, you’ll need to find contact email addresses using tools like Apollo.io. From here, you can use email outreach software to send out your cold emails and a small % of the people you contact will accept your guest blog content.

Competitor Backlink Analysis: Checking competitor backlinks will allow you to understand what’s already working for websites in your niche and give you target websites that are up for collaboration. If your competitors have built links from a site, so can you!

When Should You Build Foundational Links?

Website Launch: As soon as your website goes live, you should be thinking about building foundational links. In fact, if you can accelerate your website launch, this would be beneficial because SEO takes time and there is a time cost involved with ranking. The sooner you rank, the sooner you can earn organic search traffic. 

Website Rebrand: Since many of the foundational links you build will help with branded terms, it makes sense to focus on updating your foundational links when going through a rebrand. You’ll want to make sure that all citations have up-to-date information. If your rebrand also includes a new domain and 301 redirects from your old site to the new one, you’ll want to make sure to update as many of your foundational links as possible to the new website. While a 301 redirect will help pass link equity from old to new, there is a chance that some of your website’s authority will be lost in the process. Updating backlinks safeguards you from this potential loss in site migration.

Before an SEO Campaign: If you didn’t build foundational backlinks at your website launch, this is the time to do it. Make sure you have a strong foundation before putting resources into SEO as a growth channel to ensure the best odds of ranking on Google. 

Outsourcing Foundational Link Building

Outsourcing link building is ideal if you don’t have the time or expertise to build backlinks in the early stages of SEO. There are 2 categories of foundational links you should consider outsourcing, each for different reasons.

Citation Building: While you should be able to handle citation building on your own, outsourcing citation building to an agency often results in a higher volume of citations and it’s a massive time saver. Building up profiles in business directories can be a time consuming task, so hiring an agency is a great option if you’re swamped with other work around the time of your website launch.

If you’re interested in letting us handle your citation building campaign, contact us today for a custom quote.

Guest Blogs and Link Insertions: While these are considered some of the most powerful foundational links you can build, they’re also the most difficult ones to build. If you don’t have experience building backlinks through cold outreach or experience producing blog content, this is best left to the pros. For those ready to pull the trigger on a campaign, we have 3 tiers of backlink building packages to choose from.

outsourced link building packages

How to Outsource Blog Writing & Earn Organic Search Traffic

The Benefits of Outsourcing Blog Writing

If you’re new to leveraging organic search traffic for business growth, outsourcing blog writing to an experienced SEO agency is a great option.

Here’s a few reasons why you should consider hiring a content production team:

Lower Risk: Any SEO agency worth their weight will have strong in-house processes for keyword research, content planning, blog writing and editing. If you wanted to produce blog content for your business on your own, you’d have to develop these same processes from scratch, which comes with financial risk because you’re bound to make mistakes in your early days of writing blog content. It’s extremely likely that at the very least, your keyword research won’t be as strong as an SEO agency’s, leading to content that doesn’t rank and ultimately, doesn’t bring in new business.

Time and Cost Savings: Hiring, training and managing new staff doesn’t come free, unfortunately. In addition to developing in-house processes like the ones we described above, you’re going to (inefficiently) expend resources to get the same quality results. While the cost of hiring a single content writer might be cheaper or similar in price to hiring an agency, you have to also consider the time costs associated with going in-house. Editing content requires time and so does managing your writing staff.

Scalability: When outsourcing blog writing to professionals, you can easily scale the campaign up or down depending on and available marketing budget. This kind of flexibility allows you to optimise your SEO campaigns on the fly. If you produce blog content in-house, it’s much harder to make these kinds of adjustments since you have staff who have quotas to meet and are locked into contracts.

Quicker SEO Results: Working with a specialised team results in stronger results in terms of both quantity and quality of blogs written. This leads to stronger search engine rankings, increased organic traffic and improved conversions on your website.

Why Blogs Matter for SEO

Producing new pages (ie. blog content) for your website can be seen as widening the net of total keywords you can rank for.

Simply put, you can’t rank (well) for keywords that you don’t produce content for. While you might be able to rank for keywords related to the focus keyword of a page without explicitly writing content about it, you still need to produce content that tackles the focus keyword in the first place in order to rank.

How Much Does In-House Blog Writing Cost?

According to Glassdoor, the average blog writer makes $53,766. On average, you can expect an in-house blog writer to publish 1,000 words per day (about 1 blog). In annual terms, you can expect 250,000 words (250 blogs) at a rate of $215 per blog based on an average of 250 work days per year.

blog writer salary Glassdoor screenshot

In addition to hiring a blog writer, you’ll also need to hire an editor to handle quality assurance so that your content not only ranks on Google, but converts visitors. Glassdoor cites an average annual salary of $56,719 for a blog editor.

blog editor salary Glassdoor screenshot

Adding these 2 salaries together, you’re looking at an average of $110,485 per year to produce 250 blog articles for your business. Breaking things down, you’re looking at an average of $441.94 per blog! 

If you took that same $110,485 budget and put it towards outsourcing blog writing to an experienced SEO agency, you’d produce more blog content of the same or better quality since the average rate would be lower. 

For example, if you outsource your blog writing to us at Spacebar Collective, we only charge $300 per blog so you’d get 368 blogs for the same price. That’s an additional 118 blogs you’re losing out on by writing blog content in-house!

Preparing Your Site for Blog Content

Indexability: Ensure your website is visible to Google and properly indexed. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and address any errors it identifies, if necessary.

Accessibility: Accessibility compliance will make your website available for everyone, and in turn, make it easier for search engine crawlers to understand as well. Since Google puts weight on the user experience, this is a crucial aspect of SEO that doesn’t get discussed often enough.

Easy Navigation: For optimal user experience, ensure that every page on your website is accessible within just 3 clicks. This means that your menus should establish logical connections that lead visitors effortlessly to all the valuable content you have to offer. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to get a visualisation of your website’s pages to fix any navigation issues.

Fix Technical Issues: Make sure your website has a strong technical SEO foundation. Page load speed is especially important for the user experience and should be prioritised before publishing your library of content.

What to Look For in a Blog Writer

When shopping around for a writer to outsource your on-page SEO efforts to, it’s crucial that you ask the right questions. We’ve identified 3 key areas that you’ll want to dive into before trusting your content budget to a blog writer.

Proven Experience: Ask to see samples of their writing, preferably from your specific niche. Writing for a particular industry requires finesse in using the right language and tone. For example, when writing for B2B SaaS companies, writers should make sure to refer to conversions as signups.

Pricing: Not too low and not too high. You’re looking for the Goldilocks of blog writing. If a writer prices themselves too low, it’s likely they’re churning out high volumes of content using AI rather than giving proper TLC to the blogs they sell. If a writer prices themselves too high, it’s likely they’re gouging you for an absurd profit margin. 

Transparency: Since low quality blog content is unlikely to rank and can actually hurt your SEO, you should seek out blog writers who are transparent about how they operate. What is their process for writing? You should understand this at a basic level, from blog research to on-page SEO practices

Professional Blog Writing Services

There are 2 pricing structures for blog writing services: monthly retainers and à la carte per blog. Monthly retainers are great for ongoing SEO efforts, while paying per blog is better suited if you have a specific number of blogs you want to publish. 

Blog Writing Subscriptions: Paying for blog writing on a subscription basis is ideal if you want consistent results over the long-term. Agencies or freelance writers will commit to writing a minimum amount of words (or blogs) every month for a monthly subscription fee. When spread out over the course of a year or several years, the savings from this payment model can be massive. Working on a monthly subscription also allows the writer time to better understand your brand voice, which often results in higher-converting content.

If you’re interested in a monthly blog content writing subscription, contact us today and we’ll get you a quote that fits your specific needs.

Paying Per Blog: If you don’t have complete buy-in from the leadership at your company to tackle SEO as a growth channel, paying per blog is a great option because you can treat it as an experiment before committing a larger budget.

For those that are ready to tackle outsourcing blog writing today, we have 3 tiers of blog content packages available on our content production service page.

content production packages

How to Outsource Link Building to Improve Organic Rankings

The Benefits of Outsourcing Link Building

If you’re just getting your feet wet in the SEO game, you should really consider outsourcing your link building efforts to an SEO agency that knows what they’re doing.

Here’s a few reasons why you should consider outsourcing link building:

Time and Cost Savings: Outsourcing will free up your resources so that you can focus on more pressing aspects of your business. Outsourcing is also more cost-effective than handling things in-house since you don’t have to invest into hiring, training and managing additional staff.

Efficiency: Experienced link builders can leverage existing relationships with website admins to earn more powerful backlinks than you’d be able to on your own, in a shorter time than normal as well. Building these types of connections and relationships from scratch can often be a shot in the dark. It’s a complex process that is inconsistent at best if it’s your first time doing it. SEO agencies have processes in place to make the process push-button, simple and painless.

Risk Mitigation: Link building can be a complex and time-consuming process, one where mistakes can have real-world negative consequences on your business. If you build the wrong types of backlinks or from the wrong types of websites, this could result in an SEO penalty on your website. These can be a real pain to recover from, requiring vast amounts of resources and time. By outsourcing to professional link builders, you can minimise the risk of these costly mistakes. This ensures that your backlink profile remains strong, compliant with Google guidelines and resilient to future link spam updates that Google implements.

Scalability: When outsourcing link building to a pro, you can easily scale the campaign up or down depending on your needs and available budget. This kind of flexibility allows you to optimise your SEO campaigns on the fly. If you build links in-house, it’s much harder to make these kinds of adjustments since you have staff who are locked into contracts.

Quicker SEO Results: Working with a specialised team results in stronger results in terms of both quantity and quality of backlinks earned. This leads to stronger search engine rankings, increased organic traffic and improved conversions on your website.

Why Link Building Matters for SEO

Producing new pages (ie. blog content) for your website can be seen as widening the net of total keywords you can rank for.

Backlink building is like reeling the net in, improving rankings of individual pages and keywords.

backlinks net metaphor

Metaphors are nice and all for understanding concepts, but you want data as well, right?

Here’s a study by ahrefs that shows there’s a positive correlation between backlink volume and rankings on Google.

correlation between links and rankings

Build more backlinks, rank higher. SEO doesn’t have to be complicated. KISS.

How Much Does an In-House Link Builder Cost?

According to GlassDoor, the average link builder makes $66,379 per year. On average, you can expect an in-house link builder to bring you 13-15 high quality backlinks per month. In annual terms, that’s a range of 156-180 backlinks per year at a rate of $368 to $425 per backlink.

link builder salary from Glassdoor

If you took that same $66,379 budget and put it towards outsourcing link building to an experienced SEO agency, you’d build more backlinks of the same or better quality since the average rate would be lower. 

For example, if you outsourced your backlink building to us at Spacebar Collective, we only charge $300 per backlink so you’d get 221 backlinks for the same price. That’s an additional 41-65 backlinks you’re losing out on by link building in-house!

Preparing Your Site for a Backlink Campaign

According to John Mueller in a reddit comment, Google finds it hard to call a site authoritative after 30 articles. This means that without a base library of content, it’s going to be difficult to rank for valuable keywords, regardless of your link building efforts.

Google topical authority statement

That’s why we recommend first building out your base library of content, at least 30 blog articles that position your website as a topical authority of a subject. This will help strengthen your odds of improving rankings as you build backlinks towards your content and money pages.

On top of working towards becoming a topical authority on a subject, here are some other things we consider pre-requisite to link building efforts:

  • Indexability: Is your website visible to Google and being indexed properly? Try submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console and fix any errors it gives you (if at all).
  • Accessibility: Accessibility compliance will make your website available for everyone, and in turn, make it easier for search engine crawlers to understand as well. Since Google puts weight on the user experience, this is a crucial aspect of SEO that doesn’t get discussed often enough.
  • Easy Navigation: Every page on your website should be accessible within 3 clicks. That is to say, your menus should be logical connections to everything you have to offer. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to get a visualisation of your website’s pages to fix any navigation issues.
  • Fix Technical Issues: Have a strong technical SEO foundation. Page load speed is especially important for the user experience and should be prioritised before backlink building.

What to Look for in a Link Builder

When shopping around for a link builder to outsource your off-page SEO efforts to, it’s crucial that you ask the right questions. We’ve identified 3 key areas that you’ll want to dive into before trusting your backlink budget to a link builder.

Proven Experience: Ask to see case studies of successful link building campaigns or at the very least, screenshots of results they’ve achieved in the past. It’s also important to ask if the link builder has relevant experience, so ask if they’ve earned links within your specific industry in the past. This is important because building backlinks in different niches may require different strategies, especially if you’re in an industry notoriously difficult to build links for like finance or cannabis.

Pricing: Not too high and not too low. You’re looking for the Goldilocks of backlink building. If a link builder prices their backlinks too low, it’s unlikely they’re doing things above board. If a link builder prices their backlinks too high, it’s likely they’re gouging you for an absurd profit margin. Don’t trust anyone selling quality backlinks for under $100 or average backlinks for over $500. At the lowball, you’re going to wind up with some sketchy backlinks. At the high end, you’re better off looking at slightly cheaper options. The most reputable link builders will charge somewhere between $250 and $400 per backlink.

Transparency: Since low quality backlinks can actually hurt your SEO, you should seek link builders who are transparent about their operations. How exactly are they getting backlinks? You should understand their process at a basic level, from link prospecting to content production. Transparent operations are also a must-have when outsourcing link building. Ideally, link builders should disclose which websites they’re in talks with to secure link placements so that you can do your due diligence and approve which ones will actually get produced.

Professional Backlink Building Services

There are 2 pricing structures for backlink building services: monthly retainers and à la carte per link. Monthly retainers are great for ongoing SEO efforts, while paying per link is better suited if you have a specific number of backlinks you want to build. 

Managed Link Building Subscriptions: Paying for link building on a subscription basis is ideal if you want consistent results over the long-term. Agencies or freelance link builders will commit to building a minimum amount of links every month for a monthly subscription fee. When spread out over the course of a year or several years, the savings from this payment model can be massive. Working on a monthly subscription also allows the link builder time to better understand your brand voice, build more contextually-relevant backlinks and fine tune the campaign over time.

If you’re interested in a monthly link building subscription, contact us today and we’ll get you a quote that fits your specific needs.

Paying Per Backlink: If you don’t have complete buy-in from the leadership at your company to tackle SEO as a growth channel, paying per backlink is a great option because you can treat it as an experiment before committing a larger budget.

For those that are ready to tackle outsourcing link building today, we have 3 tiers of backlink packages available on our backlink building service page.

outsourced link building packages

How to Check Competitors’ Backlinks: SEO Competitor Analysis

Competitor Backlink Gap Analysis

If you’re struggling to build backlinks (consistently), observing and studying how your competitors are doing it is an excellent starting point. 

Understanding your competitors’ backlink profiles will open doors, allowing you to formulate your own strategies for building backlinks and in turn, improving your rankings.

One of the most simple ways to improve rankings is to check competitor backlinks and to build similar backlinks. Or you could earn backlinks from the exact same websites. If you can earn backlinks from the same websites as your competitors, think of it as evening the playing field, nulling each other out.

Analysing competitor backlink profiles will reveal low-hanging fruit backlinks that you can build with minimal resources. It will also show you the types of backlinks competitors are earning, which can act as inspiration or direct guidance for your own campaigns.

In this blog, we’ll teach you how to find your competitors, how to check competitor backlinks and how to calculate an estimated number of backlinks needed to rank for a specific keyword.

How to Find Your SEO Competitors

You probably already know who your competitors are, but your SEO competitors need more consideration. The real-world businesses that are in direct competition with you are likely also SEO competitors, but that’s not always the case.

Real-world business competitors are the companies that are directly competing with yours in the marketplace by offering similar products or services.

On the other hand, your SEO competitors are any websites that rank for the same keywords as your business in search engine results pages (SERPs). They may or may not be in direct competition with you, but they are definitely vying for the same search real estate as you.

The Battle for Search Real Estate

Search real estate is the general term for the valued space on SERPs, the top-ranking positions for any keyword.

The higher up a website ranks on search engines, the more visibility they have and the more organic search traffic they will earn. Most search engine users will click the first results, so it’s important to rank highly for valuable keywords.

For example, if you were customer.io, a customer engagement platform, you could earn search traffic and organic signups by ranking highly for keywords like “customer engagement platform” or “messaging automation”.

As you can see below, customer.io ranks 18th for “customer engagement platform”, placing them on page 2 of Google.

customer.io ranking for customer engagement platform

The battle for search real estate is a race to the top of the SERPs. Websites with stronger SEO will win more search real estate by meeting the needs of search engine algorithms and by satisfying search intent.

But how do you outrank competitors on search, exactly?

Backlink building is one of the most effective and straightforward ways to improve search engine rankings. When a contextually-relevant website links to yours, it indicates to Google (and other search engines like Bing) that your website is trustworthy and deserves to be ranked higher than other sites. Building relevant backlinks is a surefire way to earn organic search traffic.

Backlinks act as votes of confidence in the eyes of big G and the stronger the backlink, the stronger the vote of confidence is for your website. The link equity sent to your site through a backlink varies due to a number of factors, but mainly the authority of the website linking to you, its contextual relevance to your page and its contextual relevance to your overall domain.

The more quality backlinks to your site you can build, the better.

Think of your backlinks as soldiers in your army, pitted against the soldiers of other websites. The more troops you have, the better your odds of winning search real estate.

Age of Empires Janissary rush

How to Identify SEO Competitors in ahrefs

Before we hop into our tutorial on how to use ahrefs to find SEO competitors, let’s first define what an SEO competitor is, exactly. There are 2 types of SEO competitors we consider when building backlinks to improve rankings: page-level and domain-level.

Page-Level Competitors: These are the individual pages that rank for a specific keyword. For example, if you wanted to rank for “veterinary software”, your top page-level competitors would include Capterra, idexx and Vetport.

You can find page-level competitors by searching for a keyword you’re ranking for in ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and looking at the list of pages ranking for said keyword.

organic competitors

Domain-Level Competitors: Domain-level competitors are the websites that rank for a large number of keywords that your site also ranks for. This type of overlap is called content gap analysis. If you were trying to rank for terms related to “fleet management”, your domain-level competitors would include Geotab and Fleetistics.

You can find domain-level competitors by putting a domain into ahrefs’ Site Explorer and going to the Organic Competitors tab on the left.

ahrefs organic competitors

In this example, we looked up Triple Whale’s organic competitors. This is a case of SEO competitors also being real-world business competitors. Most of the sites on the list are rival analytics companies.

How to Check Competitors’ Backlinks

Checking competitors’ backlinks in SEO software is a straightforward process that provides valuable insights into their link building strategies. But fully understanding the data and its implications can be challenging, especially for those who don’t have experience ranking websites.

How to Find Competitor Backlinks with ahrefs

Once you’ve identified who your page-level and domain-level competitors are, it’s time to look up their backlink profiles. This can easily be done in ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

check competitors backlinks with ahrefs Site Explorer

For this example, we’re going to pretend we’re a customer success software trying to compete with ClientSuccess and Gainsight. First we pop their domains into the Site Explorer, then we click on the Backlinks tab to get a full list of their backlinks.

backlink checker in ahrefs

ClientSuccess has a grand total of 1,928 backlinks according to ahrefs, quite the backlink profile to compete with. However, not all of these backlinks are worth paying attention to and not all of them will move the needle for them.

In the next section, we’ll go over how to evaluate competitor backlink profiles in a practical way for planning out backlink building campaigns.

Other SEO Tools to Check Competitors’ Backlinks

Evaluating Competitor Backlink Profiles

To find the truly needle-moving backlinks, we’ll need to apply some filters to narrow the results down from ClientSuccess’ 1,928 backlinks. 

First, let’s switch to view only One Link Per Domain. After all, we aren’t going to be building multiple backlinks from the same website, as this is an extremely inefficient use of resources. This brings the backlink total down to 493.

one link per domain filter

Next, we apply our filters, the same ones outlined in our link prospecting guide.

  • dofollow only: Nofollow links are much weaker than dofollow.
  • DR 45+: Anything below this will take high volumes of links to improve rankings.
  • Domain traffic 1,000+: Sites with less traffic are more likely to be link farms.

This effectively weeds out spammy backlinks, link farms and low authority websites that don’t help improve rankings. The end result is just 82 backlinks that actually move the needle. This is a lot more approachable than the original list of 1,928 backlinks.

filters for checking competitor backlinks

If you want to be extremely thorough when checking competitors’ backlinks, you should repeat the same process for each page-level and domain-level competitor. Once you’ve come up with an estimated number of needle-moving backlinks for each competitor, you’ll have a better idea of how many backlinks you need to play catch-up.

Quality Over Quantity

Improving rankings in search engines requires a strategic approach to backlink building. By analysing the domain traffic, eliminating link farms and low authority websites, we can focus on just the backlinks that truly make a difference.

In the example we gave on ClientSuccess, a customer success software, we found that out of their 1,928 backlinks, only 82 were actually effective in moving the needle. This highlights the importance of quality over quantity when it comes to building backlinks.