The 80:20 of B2B SaaS SEO

Disclaimer:

Hey there! Before we dive in, just a heads-up: this guide is very specific to B2B SaaS SEO. If you’re in a different space, like D2C or eCommerce, you might find some of this less useful. 

We’re focusing on things that work best for SaaS companies looking to generate real results. When we say real results, we refer to MQLs/free trials within a couple of weeks from SEO. So, if that sounds like you, you’re in the right place! If not, feel free to skim through, but it might not be a perfect fit.

Let’s get into it…

Remember when they held your hand while you drew your first stroke in kindergarten? Those were the good old days. But they don’t do it anymore in startups, corporate, and businesses.

Well, 80/20 of SEO is that hand-holding.

We – I (Ishaan) and the folks at Spear Growth – created this guide to help anyone and everyone rethink SEO.

Why? Because most marketing folks or founders think SEO is some magic wand. They’ll wave it, drive traffic, get conversions, and voila – they made a fortune.

Why listen to us?
SEO success stories over the years.

Spear Growth is almost 4 years old, and we’ve made huge breakthroughs in B2B SaaS with SEO. Like:

1. 250% ▲ of enterprise deals closed for DarwinBox through SEO.
2. 2x SQLs for Engagerocket in 2 months through SEO.
3. And many more.

Our goal? Get SQLs. No vanity metrics. We decided to open-source some of the 80/20 things we did for B2B SaaS companies to get results like these.

FTE SEOs never become CMOs
Why full-time SEOs rarely rise to the CMO role

In 2020, I asked a question in the PEAK community, which had about 300 members, mostly CMOs. 

“How many CMOs do you know that were full-time SEOs in their career?” 

Out of the ~40 responses that I got, only one person knew of a single CMO who had been an SEO. The other 39? They knew none.

This matched my own experience perfectly. That’s why I started the survey in the first place.

But why is this the case?

Long ago in a forest, there lived a witch who couldn’t rank on Google… Just kidding!

The real reason is that SEO is extremely broad. Not just for you reading this—for SEOs actually doing it every day.

I can teach a marketer how to handle ads in 2-3 weeks, and they’ll be decent at it. 

But SEO? That takes about 2 years just to be average.

SEO is very complex. There are 10-50 things to learn in each area: tech SEO, content strategy, and backlinking. 

And each area is very different. You need to know a bit about coding, operations, content creation, and analytics. Even after all that, you need to be great at working with different teams, which requires executive skills. Plus, the feedback in SEO is slow and sometimes doesn’t exist. Good mentors? Rarely find them in SEO.

In short, it’s hard to even be average at SEO.

And since it’s not the most fun or exciting area for most marketers, many start here and get lost. Another problem is that even after all this effort, you might still end up being a so-so SEO. You learn to follow checklists and do things because they “should” be done. Not because they will bring results.

See how this, culturally, sounds exactly the opposite of the skills a good CMO needs?

Over the years, we’ve conducted 10+ rounds of hiring to add SEOs to our team. The sad reality is that in more than half of these rounds, we end up rejecting all candidates.

The skills needed to excel at SEO are very different from those needed to be a successful CMO. CMOs need to see the big picture, make strategic decisions, and drive business results. SEOs, on the other hand, often get bogged down in the details, focusing on technicalities and checklists.

This mismatch is why you rarely see SEOs making the leap to the CMO role. It’s not because they lack talent or effort. It’s because the skills and mindset required are fundamentally different.

SEOs aren’t (shouldn’t be?) trusted
The disconnect between CMOs and SEO teams

I once got on a call with a senior marketing leadership of a fortune 100 company.

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“I am so frustrated!”

“By what?”

“I just can’t talk to my SEO team. ”

“What do you mean?”

“I give them MQL targets, and ask them what they’ll need to accomplish it. They can’t respond.
I ask them what’s the progress on MQLs. They tell me they got backlinks and added canonical tags.
They seem to be doing something, but I don’t know how I can even speak with them!”

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This is very common. SEOs and CMOs speak different languages. 

• SEO teams talk in terms of keywords, backlinks, and meta tags.
• Marketing leaders talk about revenue, conversions, and business growth. 

Neither of them knows how to bridge the gap. And to truly bridge the gap, both sides need to create a common language.

CMOs have given up

The Trust Deficit in SEO

At Spear Growth, we offer two services: ads and SEO.
The sales calls for these services differ by a LOT.

Think about this: On ad sales calls, almost all the prospects mention their SQL targets. Nobody ever tells us to do keyword research, manage bids, or set up conversion tracking. Which makes sense. We’re the experts—give us the targets, and we’ll tell you how we’ll achieve them.

But on SEO sales calls, it’s a different story. Prospects tell us they want 10 backlinks a month, post 2 blogs a week, and increase the page speed score to X. 

It’s almost insulting. Both to them and us. 

They can’t trust SEO agencies. But It’s not their fault. It’s ours (SEOs).

 If you’ve spoken with SEO agencies or even internal teams, you’ll quickly realize that they shouldn’t or can’t trust SEOs. SEOs haven’t given CMOs a reason to trust them.

Budget allocation for SEO is… weird.
SEO Budget Allocation

For every other marketing channel, you put in more budget to get more results. You invest directly in ads, campaigns, and promotions, and you see a direct correlation between spend and outcomes. 

But for SEO, the allocation is scattered. 

You’re putting more budget into:

1. content creation
2. web development
3. product marketing
4. PR
5. sometimes, even the product itself!

Budget allocation is fragmented.

The feedback loop between results and effort is long and often non-existent.

SEOs can’t bridge the gap between SEO work and investment.

So…

Yeah…

CMOs allocate a budget but frankly it’s not deployed very well.

SEO makes CMOs feel helpless……Why CMOs Struggle with Control and Clarity

~40% of CMOs’ targets come from SEO, yet they have little control over the levers to pull. 

Before launching Spear Growth, I used to lead SEO for a B2B SaaS unicorn.

I built the SEO function there from scratch.

By senior leadership, I was asked to:

1. Get Impressions -> Which will turn into traffic
2. Then do CRO on it to get conversions
3. Optimize it further to increase MQLs

Sounds like a great structured plan, right? The problem is that it’s fundamentally flawed.

If you get traffic from blogs ranking for keywords like “leadership offsite plan” or “applicant rejection template” you cannot possibly “do CRO” and turn this traffic into MQLs and SQLs..

Why? The intent behind these keywords ≠ your sales goals.

• “Leadership offsite plan” seekers want advice/templates, not software.
• “Applicant rejection template” seekers need a quick resource, not your product.

No matter how much CRO you do—optimizing landing pages, adding CTAs, tweaking forms—you won’t convert this type of traffic into meaningful leads. The traffic doesn’t have the right intent. Not all traffic is created equal.

This issue is compounded by blogs from agencies and tools claiming that SEO takes a year to show results. They say you’ll see traffic growth and then it’ll magically turn into conversions. Absolute BS.

At Spear Growth, our clients see MQLs within 4 weeks of implementation consistently.

[Link to our sample results]

Making decisions for SEO is even more difficult because standard marketing reporting doesn’t help anyone make decisions either.

Here’s a screenshot of one slide of the kind of reporting we do for our clients, which helps them actually take decisions:

Want to see a sample report so you can replicate it for yourself? Reach out to udayan@speargrowth.com.

IMPORTANT: Do less, really well.

The way SEO works for B2B SaaS

There are 3 types of 💩ty strategies companies commonly use:

💩 Strategy 1: Relying on Checklists…

1. Publish 2 blogs per week – Just cranking out content without a strategy.
2. Solve 905202 tech issues on your website – Trying to fix every tiny technical issue.
3. Buy 100 backlinks a month – Focusing on quantity over quality for backlinks.
   

💩 Strategy 2: Relying on tools…

1. You have started publishing 2 blogs per week – Tools tell you to keep publishing content, but without direction.
2. You are trying to solve 905202 tech issues on your website
3. You are buying 100 backlinks a month – Not considering their relevance or quality.
   

💩 Strategy 3: Following influencers blindly…

1. You have started publishing 2 blogs per week
2. You are trying to solve 905202 tech issues on your website
3. You are buying 100 backlinks a month
   

All three only work because you do so much work that you get lucky enough times. But if you don’t get lucky, you won’t see a growth in SQLs. 

Either way, you’re wasting time, money, and focus.

What works isn’t something revolutionary but a simple first principles-based approach to SEO.

Want to bring in SQLs?

1. Publish the pages that’ll bring you SQLs.
2. Fix the tech issues that are in the way of you getting SQLs.
3. Get backlinks when that is what is stopping you from getting SQLs.

In a quarter, don’t do everything you can do for SEO. Prioritize the two most important “things” to do in a quarter.

If only someone could write a guide in under 500 words to help you understand what these “things” are. Oh wait, that’s what we did.

Simplifying SEO for you ♥️ (You’re welcome)

The SEO guide for CMOs in 441 words

There are a few key parts of SEO:

1. Creating new pages (Content strategy sprint)

• Every page you create is taking a bet. A bet that the page will rank for the keyword you’re targeting. The traffic from that keyword will in turn generate SQLs.

2. Fixing website tech (Tech sprint)

• Good tech doesn’t boost your results, but bad tech holds you back. If you’re supposed to get 20 SQLs a month, bad tech might mean you’re only getting 15. Fix the tech issues, and you should capture the missing 5.

3. Backlinking/off page (Backlinking sprint)

• We wouldn’t link to porn or malicious sites from Spear Growth. Why? We have a reputation to maintain. Every website we link to is given a vote of confidence. That’s a signal search engines like Google notice. Good companies have a lot of backlinks among other indicators.

When to do things differently:

Then there are a few times you need to do things differently:

1. When migrating the website (Migration sprint)

• Pre-migration: The SEO team should help guide the new website structure, what keyword each page should target, how the website is coded, and how the migration is planned from the old website to the new.
• During-migration: Your SEO team should help make sure the migration went smoothly i.e. none of the pages are broken and the redirects are set properly.
• Post-migration: Your SEO team should make sure any drop in traffic is bouncing back, all internal links and backlinks follow the new URL structure, and any sections of the website where there is a traffic drop is identified & rectified.

2. Yearly, after your website has 500+ pages (Quick wins sprint)

• Your SEO team should identify where you can make a few small changes to see an uptick in MQLs from SEO immediately.

3. Once you’re a market leader, or close. (Critical keywords sprint)

• Identify what keywords are business critical for you. I.e., keywords you would expect only the market leaders to rank for. (Eg: “HR Management Software” or “CRM”). Then, create a “menu” for you with keywords & the projected SQLs from each keyword on one side and the cost & time investment to rank for it on the other side. So, when you’re ready, you can give ranking for these a shot.

Yes, I know this is the best SEO article you’ve ever read. As true marketers, here’s our offer to you. 🙂 If you know what to do, and your current team can do it. You don’t need us. If you know what to do, and you want some help with SEO. Speak with us. If you still don’t know what to do, speak with me. I’ll help you out, and if you need us, I’ll recommend it.

These are the things you need to do SEO well.

1. A great team
2. Great reporting (check the last to last section)

Finally, this is what you need for the implementation to actually happen:

1. Make sure where SEO sits in the right place in the marketing org
2. Align the related teams’ KPIs with SEO initiatives

PS: SEO isn’t the channel

Just a rant. (Feel free to skip)

The channel is called organic search. 🙂

SEO is the act of optimizing it.

Also… SEO isn’t a job title.

SEO executive is.

This section was just for me to rant a little. I needed it. Lol