If you’re running a SaaS business, you’ve likely been told — repeatedly — that SEO is all about targeting the right keywords. You’ve probably spent hours, maybe even weeks, building out massive keyword spreadsheets: high-volume phrases, low competition terms, long-tail modifiers, branded and non-branded search queries.
And yet, after months of effort and blog posts, the results are underwhelming. Maybe you’re getting some traffic, but the leads are few and far between. Your bounce rate is high. Time-on-site is low. Conversions? Practically flat.
So what gives?
The problem isn’t that you’re not doing SEO — it’s that you’re doing it the old way, and keyword lists are at the center of that flawed approach.
The Problem with Keyword-First SEO
The traditional keyword-first model assumes that search traffic equals value. It places the keyword — not the user or their intent — at the heart of your content strategy. This made sense a decade ago, when search engines were simpler and ranking for exact-match terms was a reliable way to gain visibility.
But today’s SEO — especially for SaaS — is far more complex.
Google and other search engines have evolved. They no longer reward content stuffed with repetitive phrases. Instead, they prioritize relevance, depth, structure, and usefulness. Simply targeting a keyword like “CRM software for small business” isn’t enough anymore. Search engines want to know:
- Does your content answer the user’s deeper questions?
- Is it aligned with the buyer’s journey?
- Does it provide value that’s better than what’s already ranking?
When you start with a keyword list, you often miss the nuance behind the search. You focus on hitting specific phrases rather than solving real problems or guiding a potential customer toward a solution.
Keyword Lists Don’t Reflect Buyer Intent
Let’s say you’re targeting the keyword “best project management software.” Sounds like a great term, right? It’s got decent volume and probably moderate competition. But what kind of user is searching that?
It could be:
- A student looking for free tools for a school project
- A small business owner comparing free plans
- A CTO researching platforms for a large team rollout
- A content marketer doing research for an article
One keyword. Multiple intents.
If you’re basing your strategy on keyword lists alone, you’re likely going to write generic content that tries to appeal to everyone — and ends up resonating with no one. That means higher bounce rates, fewer sign-ups, and wasted content resources.
Instead, the more effective approach is to map your content to intent and the stages of the SaaS buyer journey: awareness, consideration, and decision. Your content should be strategic, not just optimized.
The Content Factory Trap
Here’s what happens when SaaS companies lean too heavily on keyword lists: they turn into content factories.
The SEO team produces dozens of blog posts per month, each focused on a different keyword, hoping to cast a wide net. The problem? These posts often:
- Overlap with each other
- Compete for internal rankings (keyword cannibalization)
- Lack a clear call-to-action
- Don’t guide the reader toward a product-fit decision
- Live in isolation — not part of a larger topic cluster or funnel
In short, the content may bring in traffic, but it doesn’t move the needle.
And traffic without conversion isn’t growth — it’s vanity.
SEO for SaaS Is About Topics, Not Just Terms
A more modern and effective approach is topic-based SEO. This means focusing on themes that matter to your audience and building comprehensive content ecosystems around them.
For example, instead of trying to rank for “marketing automation tool,” you might develop a full content cluster around:
- How to automate lead scoring
- Email workflows that improve SaaS onboarding
- Tools that integrate with HubSpot or Salesforce
- Common automation mistakes and how to fix them
- Case studies from companies who improved retention with automation
This approach helps you:
- Build topical authority, which Google loves
- Keep users engaged by offering related, valuable content
- Guide users through a logical journey — from awareness to conversion
- Earn backlinks organically because your content is truly useful
Strategy Over Spreadsheets
None of this means you should throw away keyword research entirely. It still plays a role — but it should be supporting your strategy, not defining it.
Instead of starting with a list of 200 keywords, start with 5–10 core questions:
- What are our top personas searching for at each stage of their journey?
- What pain points does our product solve, and how do people describe those problems?
- What content already exists — and how can we do it better?
- How can our content naturally lead to sign-ups, demos, or trials?
From there, you can use keywords to refine your content and ensure it gets discovered — but always with a focus on intent, not volume.
This is the philosophy embraced by modern SaaS SEO agency services that understand growth isn’t just about ranking — it’s about revenue. These services don’t just provide you with pages optimized for the right terms, but align content creation with buyer psychology, technical SEO, CRO, and long-term business goals.
Final Thought: Be Useful, Not Just Visible
At the end of the day, SEO is a means to an end. For SaaS, that end is usually MRR growth, not just clicks or pageviews.
Keyword lists, by themselves, lead to disjointed content and surface-level optimization. They may bring traffic, but traffic without relevance or direction doesn’t convert.
So instead of chasing keywords, start chasing understanding — of your customer, their problems, their journey, and the questions they’re really asking.
Because when you stop optimizing for search engines and start optimizing for people, that’s when the real growth begins.