You know what’s better than ranking #1 on Google? Teaching your team how to get there. Fresh off the heels of Formaloo being named one of the top 10 form builders globally (thanks, Capterra!), I gathered our marketing mavens for a deep-dive SEO workshop to review how a B2B SaaS business can achieve SEO success.
Between sips of coffee and bursts of “aha!” moments, we transformed complex SEO concepts into actionable strategies. No boring lectures here – just pure, practical knowledge bombs that our team could start implementing immediately. And since we’re all about sharing the wealth at Formaloo, I thought I’d give you a peek behind the curtain of our SEO power session.
How search engines make decisions about your content
Before diving into tactics, it’s crucial to understand how search engines work. The process can be broken down into three main stages:
1. Crawling
Search engines use bots to discover and scan web pages across the internet. These bots crawl your website and discover your pages by following links. Think of it as Google sending out digital scouts to map your content landscape.
2. Indexing
When a bot discovers your page, it organizes and stores it in a massive database. This is where your sitemap becomes crucial – it’s essentially providing search engines with a roadmap of your content. A well-structured sitemap helps ensure all your important pages get discovered and indexed properly.
3. Ranking
Finally, ranking brings together multiple factors to determine where your content appears in search results. So, when someone searches, the engine determines which pages to show and in what order.
This includes:
- Content relevance to the search query
- Quality of your on-page optimization
- Overall content quality and depth
- Authority signals through backlinks
- User experience metrics like site speed and mobile-friendliness
The key insight here? Google’s fundamental goal hasn’t changed since its creation. The ultimate goal has always been to show the best results first. Everything else flows from this principle.
So, if you have the best and most relevant content, you’ll show up first on the list. And this, my friend, is the most essential insight you should have in mind to succeed in your SEO journey.
The 3 pillars of SEO
Technical SEO
Technical SEO ensures your website’s infrastructure supports your optimization efforts. Think of it as building a solid foundation for your SEO house. Key technical considerations include:
- Site speed optimization: Pages should load quickly on all devices.
- Mobile-first design approach: Your site must work flawlessly on mobile devices.
- Proper implementation of structured data: Use headers (H1, H2, etc.) correctly.
- Clean URL structure: URLs should be logical and readable.
- HTTPS security.
Technical SEO is essential to your website’s SEO success. And it isn’t always something to be done by the technical team.
Your marketing has to maintain and follow the technical best practices and structures in every piece of content they create.
For example, the images your content creator or designer uploads into content can be heavy enough to slow down the page load and cause SEO issues.
Make sure your team is aware of the best practices and follows them in every content they publish.
On-page optimization
On-page optimization is where you have the most direct control over your SEO success. It involves strategically optimizing your content elements to help search engines understand and rank your pages effectively. Key areas include:
- Title tags and meta descriptions that accurately reflect your content while including relevant keywords.
- Header tags (H1, H2, etc.) that create a clear content hierarchy.
- Content quality matters most. Create high-quality, engaging content that matches search intent.
- Internal linking structure that helps both users and search engines navigate your site.
- User experience elements like page speed and mobile responsiveness.
Remember: while keywords are important, they should flow naturally within valuable content.
I’ve seen many content marketers and content creators think keyword-first. This results in the keyword stuffing effect where the content quality is sacrificed for more relevant keywords. As a result, the content doesn’t convert much.
A successful on-page SEO also involves updating existing content. Another mistake I’ve seen by content marketers, is that they do a keyword research and try to stuff found keywords into the content. This is wrong!
Instead, do a competitor research!
List the top-ranking content for that topic and see what they’ve talked about. Learn from their content and optimize your content based on the insights you gained out of this research.
Add the missing topics and expand your content into other relevant topics. This way, you’ll have a comprehensive piece of content that nobody has in the market. And you’ll have all necessary keywords incorporated automatically.
Off-page optimization
Off-page optimization focuses on building your site’s authority and reputation through external signals. The cornerstone of this is earning quality backlinks from reputable websites in your industry. However, it’s not just about quantity – the quality and relevance of linking sites matter significantly.
Effective off-page optimization strategies include:
- Creating valuable, link-worthy content that naturally attracts backlinks.
- Building relationships with industry influencers and publications.
- Guest posting on reputable industry blogs.
- Maintaining an active social media presence (while not a direct ranking factor, it helps with content distribution).
In my opinion, you shouldn’t rely your SEO strategy on off-page optimization. If your on-page SEO and other marketing efforts like PR work efficiently, you’ll get valuable backlinks automatically.
But off-page SEO won’t work well without having valuable, high-quality content. So, to ensure your SEO strategy is successful, focus on on-page SEO first.
How to develop a successful SEO strategy
Building a successful SEO strategy is super easy. Start with your current situation and build your way up on the improvements ladder.
0. IF starting from zero
If you don’t have any content on your website, start with a competitor analysis to discover the topics you can talk about on your website.
Develop a consistent content calendar and keep posting for a few months to capture some traffic.
Make sure you have Google Analytics and Search Console integrated into your website so you can track your traffic and the effectiveness of your content creation efforts.
Then, move on to the next step.
1. Analyze your current situation
OK, so you do have some content on your website and you also have some Google Analytics and Search Console data. Now, let’s analyze it.
Check Google Analytics to see which pieces of content have the most traffic, engagement, and events.
Check Search Console to see which keywords and queries received the most impressions and clicks on Google.
Now, with this insight, create a topic hierarchy. List the big-picture topics first, and narrow them down into detailed ones.
See which topics have received the most engagement, whether on search or on the website. This is your strategy’s north star.
For example, let’s say most queries with high CTR can be categorized under the “Listing” type of content. Content that lists the top tools for different use cases and teams. So you’ll have a “Listing” topic that has different topic ideas under it.
2. Conduct a competitor analysis
Now that you know your strong suits, it’s time to see your content gaps.
I’ve seen content creators who do a competitor analysis and start creating content based on the gaps they find. Which is wrong! Without the previous step, this step is useless.
Your competitor analysis must be led by your strong suits. It means, find the content gaps that lie under your strong suit topics.
For example, if your strong suit topic is “Listing” type of content, see what listing content do your competitors have that you’re missing.
This method saves you hours and aligns your SEO strategy with success.
To analyze your competitors’ SEO strategies based on your strong suit topics, you can follow these steps:
- Track their organic search traffic patterns
- Identify their top-performing content
- Analyze their backlink profiles
- Study their keyword targeting strategy
- Evaluate their content structure and formatting
Remember that your SEO competitors aren’t necessarily your business competitors. A website that ranks high for your target topic but doesn’t provide similar business values is still your SEO competitor.
This analysis helps you identify opportunities and gaps in your strong suit topics.
3. Perform a strategic keyword research
Effective keyword research goes beyond finding high-volume search terms. You need to be more strategic in what keywords could work for you.
Leverage the outcome of steps 1 and 2 in your keyword research strategy. Find keywords that are adjacent to your strong suit topics and prioritize them based on their difficulty.
It’s important to note that the difficulty percentage that tools like SEMRush provide are an approximate of the market. For you, a keyword’s difficulty could be very different from its difficulty for another website.
This is why strategic keyword targeting is essential.
To make sure your SEO keyword targeting is successful, you need to target keywords that are adjacent to your strong suit topics. But that’s not it!
Start with the keywords with low difficulty and high search volume. Sort your adjacent keywords based on these properties and then begin to educate yourself about each keyword.
Focus on:
- Understanding search intent behind the keywords.
- Identifying long-tail keyword opportunities.
- Analyzing keyword difficulty versus potential return.
- Mapping keywords to different stages of the user journey.
- Finding keyword gaps in your current content.
And always make sure your keywords are adjacent to your strong suit topics.
4. Create a consistent content calendar
Now, having your strong suit topics and your prioritized keywords list, you can easily develop your content calendar.
Content creation should follow these principles:
- Address specific user needs and pain points
- Provide comprehensive coverage of topics
- Include relevant keywords naturally
- Structure content for easy scanning and reading
- Update regularly to maintain freshness
When writing content, always think context-first. Who are you writing for, and why? Why should they read your content and not someone else’s? What’s different in your piece that matters most?
Thinking context-first helps you write content that converts. Looking back, you’ll see that you’ve already incorporated the essential keywords into your content without having to stuff them!
Since you’ve already educated yourself about the keywords and the intent behind them, you know which to use in your content and how to use them for maximum effectiveness.
Your keyword research process is an educational phase for the writer to understand how people think about a specific topic. So the insights during that phase helps the writer with effective writing.
5. Build your on-page optimization strategy
Content creation is not the only thing you should do for SEO success. To stand out, you need to keep optimizing your existing content for better performance.
You need a measuring system to understand how your content is performing. KPIs like traffic, engagement, and events help you understand how helpful it is for your audience.
Update and improve the underperforming content regularly. Test different headlines and intros to see which ones stick.
Conduct regular technical SEO audits to identify and fix your website issues. Search Console also provide valuable reports on how your website performs.
Optimize internal linking structure. Make sure your most valuable content, like long-form pieces, is connected to relevant content.
Your long-form content is called a content pillar that can be broken down into many smaller pieces of content. Each small piece is targeting an adjacent keyword, while the content pillar is targeting your strong suit topic.
Ensure mobile responsiveness in every piece of content you create. It’s essential for search engines that your page can be easily read and interacted with by any user on any device. Check Search Console for your website’s responsiveness issues.
Keep improving page load speed. Make sure the pictures and files aren’t too big to load and keep your pages light.
How to measure your SEO success
Track these key metrics on your website to evaluate how your SEO strategy is working. Learn from your data and adjust your tactics based on that insight.
Here are some KPIs you can track on your website:
- Organic traffic: Overall visitors from search
- Keyword rankings: Position for target terms
- Conversion rate: How traffic turns into results
- Page speed: Technical performance
- User engagement: Time on site, bounce rate
- Backlink quality: Authority of linking domains
Your roadmap to SEO success
If there’s one thing I hope you’ve taken away from this guide, it’s that SEO success isn’t about quick hacks or gaming the system – it’s about creating genuine value for your users while speaking Google’s language. Let’s recap the key elements of your SEO journey:
Start with strong foundations
Your SEO success begins with technical excellence. A fast, secure, and mobile-friendly website isn’t just good for search engines; it’s essential for user experience. Make technical SEO your first priority, not an afterthought.
Then, move on to the next pillar of your foundation, which is your strong suit topics. Build up your keyword research strategy on these strong pillars.
Content is still king, but context is queen
Creating content isn’t enough – you need content that answers specific questions and serves clear user intent. Every piece of content should have a purpose, whether it’s educating your audience, solving a problem, or helping make a decision.
At Formaloo, we’ve seen our best results when we focus on depth over breadth, truly becoming experts in our niche rather than trying to cover everything.
Measure, learn, and adapt
SEO isn’t a “set it and forget it” strategy. Use your analytics to understand what’s working:
- Which content drives the most engaged traffic?
- What pages have the highest conversion rates?
- Where are users spending the most time? Let these insights guide your future strategy.
Your next steps
- Start with a thorough audit of your current SEO status.
- Prioritize technical fixes that could be holding you back.
- Develop a content calendar based on strategic keyword research and user intent (As explained in this article).
- Set up proper tracking and analytics.
- Begin creating and optimizing content.
- Monitor and adjust based on results.
What aspects of SEO have you found most challenging in your organization? Share your experiences on this form, and I’ll write more about that!