18 SaaS SEO Tools We Use to Help Our Client’s Own Google’s SERPs

SaaS Marketing
Last Updated: April 15, 2023 14 min
Justin Berg
Justin Berg

Founder of Rock The Rankings

Let’s face it – there are a TON of SEO SaaS tools out on the market, and it’s tough to know which to choose for what you’re specifically trying to accomplish.

We work using tools on a daily basis to help conduct high-level keyword research, internal link analysis and other everyday SEO activities for our clients, and we often get asked:

What are the tools we should be using in-house and have a subscription for to best manage our SEO efforts?

We’ve compiled the list of the best SaaS SEO tools we actively use for our client’s work, and the ones we’d recommend in each category checking out. 👇

Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research is an integral part of building content.

Tools allow you to analyze how competitive terms are to rank, how to structure your page’s content as well as how to prioritize your content marketing efforts.


Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most robust SEO tools on the market. It’s our go-to solution for keyword research when we’re in the “tool phase” of research, but it has many other core functionalities around internal and external linking, as well as the ability to review competitor’s pages and keywords.

If we had to choose one single go-to solution that hits on most-items SEO-related, Ahrefs is a must-have.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • The most comprehensive all-in-one SEO toolset – if you don’t use any other tool on this list (well, other than GA and GSC) it’s got to be this
  • Properly monitor internal and external links
  • Conduct keyword analysis, including deep dives into intent
  • Review competitor’s top pages by organic traffic, and backlinks

Price: Starting at $99 a month

Is there a free version? No free version and no trial is available.


SEMRush

SEMRush is the core competitor to Ahrefs and is also the swiss army knife of SEO tools. Although we also use SEMRush, mostly for its toxic backlink analysis and review, our go-to all-around in Ahrefs.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • One thing we really like about the tool is it also breaks down terms on intent-level
  • Keep a close eye on your link profile for negative SEO attacks, and disavow links easily
  • Has everything under the sun you’d need to run competitor analysis, topical analysis and review competitor data, including their paid ads

Price: Starting at $119.95 a month

Is there a free version? Yes, 7 days. Get started here.


Google Trends is an excellent, free resource from Google which lets you analyze search terms that are trending in popularity across the web. This can be a great resource to start building some high-level keyword research around, especially for new terms and jargon that has popped up in the space.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Google Trends allows you to quickly gain insights on what’s trending when it comes to new trends, and to easily gauge search interest on a scale of 0-100.
  • This is a great way to understand at a high level the popularity of a given term/topic, especially as most keyword research tools most likely won’t have data if the term is too fresh.
  • Great to compare two or more terms against each other to see what’s getting more search love.

Price: Free!


Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a browser extension that layers on top of the Google search results to dig-out secondary keywords and long-tail keywords right within the SERPs themselves. This tool can be extremely helpful when building out content briefs.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • This is a great addition to tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush which let you browse and do keyword research right in Google’s search results, or at a page level.
  • Quickly gain keyword insights on any page, as well as historical data and performance at the drop of a hat.

Price: Starting at $10 for 100,000 credits.

Is there a free version? No free version or trial, but $10 a year is a pretty great price for what you get from the tool.


Content Research Tools

Content research tools allow us to dig further into topics we want to build content around, especially at a more granular level when getting into page-level details and specifics.

Exploding Topics

Exploding Topics is something like Google Trends on steroids – seriously. Rather than having to “be in the know” about such topics, you can easily get a quick list of what’s trending by category, and dig in further.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Quickly dig into trending topics in the software/SaaS niche to cover them before competitors
  • Gauge the actual trend/demand over time and easily monitor performance
  • A great way to proactively monitor SaaS trends and topics, and have them come straight to your inbox

Price: Starting at $47 per month.

Is there a free version? There’s a free version, but you have to upgrade to get access to “Members Only” trends and keywords.


Answer The Public

Answer The Public allows instant insights into the minds of your customers by providing back search query data around questions.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Quickly dig into relevant questions you can use for content topics, as well as for FAQs on features and benefits pages

Price: Starting at $X a month

Is there a free version? ANSWER


ClearScope

ClearScope is a content optimization platform that allows you to plug in a primary keyword or phrase, and pull back SERP data based on ranking pages, including topically-related keywords and other relevant data from each and every individual top 10 ranking page.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Quickly conduct topical research and analysis for any type of content page
  • Benchmark your content vs. the competitor’s pages in terms of keyword usage, word count, and language-level

The one thing it doesn’t do well:

  • ClearScope (and their competitors) are not a great alternative to building computer-generated content briefs. They can aid in the research process, but building automated content briefs, it’s just not there yet. We’d highly suggest using ClearScope, Ahrefs, and other tools during the research phase, but not rely fully on their outlines to drive content creation. Build your own data-driven content briefs.

Price: Starting at $170 per month

Is there a free version? No free version, and no trial.


Technical SEO Tools

Technical SEO for SaaS has a few core factors you should be keeping an eye on, but that doesn’t mean it should be neglected. Be proactive in monitoring issues with these tools, depending on your website’s size and complexity.

Everyday Use: SiteBulb

SiteBulb is our go-to crawler which we use every single day to crawl clients’ websites, pull back all of the technical factors, and push that through our Growth Audit phase.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Easily keep a pulse on important technical SaaS SEO factors
  • Quickly find and resolve technical issues and re-crawl after resolutions are implemented
  • An excellent internal linking map functionality built in to review your internal links
  • A much more robust tool compared to Screaming Frog or the crawlers which are built into SEMRush/Ahrefs that constantly throw false flags

Price: Starting at $13.50 per month

Is there a free version? No, but there is a trial. Get started here for 14 days of free crawling goodness.


Free: Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is the classic, free SEO crawler used for smaller-scale websites. Its simple UI allows you to jump right in and start gathering powerful data in a matter of minutes.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Perfect for small websites that want a quick crawling experience, at no cost (less than 500 pages)
  • Simplified datasets without the clutter of other larger tools, meaning get in and out quick

Price: $209 per year

Is there a free version? Yes! Free under 500 URLs. You’ll be missing some of the full functionalities, though.

Struggling to grow organic demos signups? Rock The Rankings is a top-ranked SaaS SEO Agency that helps SaaS businesses make organic their customer acquisition engine. We’ll create a free marketing plan for your business, and walk you through step-by-step exactly what needs to be done to grow faster.

Large Websites: OnCrawl

OnCrawl is the go-to for heavy-hitting websites that are complex, and have a large page structure (i.e. more than 500,000 total pages). This allows for advanced crawling and datasets which other tools like SiteBulb or Screaming Frog are unable to handle.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • The perfect tool for running an advanced Technical SEO audit for larger-sized domains
  • Excellent for SaaS organizations with complex feature-sets such as multi-language, multi-country targetting
  • Data visualization that other tools can’t provide when it comes to internal link structure

Price: Starting at $49 per month – how much you will need depends on site size.

Is there a free version? No, but there is a free 14-day trial.


Quick Snapshots: Detailed Pro Extension

There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t use the Detailed SEO Extension. It’s the perfect tool to get quick page-level overviews on core technical and on-page SEO items.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Quickly review lading pages, alternative pages, or any page to see if meta description and titles are properly defined, or if canonicals are incorrectly used.
  • Check a pages internal link usage on the fly, and see where you could add some internal links to boost page performance in the SERPs
  • Check schema mark-up on relevant pages, as well as page-level hierarchy in a matter of seconds

Price: Free.


Site Speed Tools

Site speed is a core component of Technical SEO for SaaS brands. With that in mind, we want to keep a close eye on site speed across our pages, as well as Google’s Core Web Vitals.

GTMetrix

GTMetrix allows you to plugin a URL and quickly understand the page speed performance around page speed load times, as well as other

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • An excellent, and free way to monitor page speed performance
  • Returns optimization data to help developers implement changes around Google’s Core Web Vitals
  • Easily check across different severs to monitor page speed for different locations around the world

Price: Free!


Google Page Speed Insights

Google Page Speed Insights is a free developer tool from Google allowing you to monitor page performance. GPSI plugs directly into Google’s Core Web Vitals, including LCP, FID, and CLS.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Monitor and compare both mobile and desktop performance at a page level site-wide
  • Provides the exact opportunities for implementing fixes to improve page speed performance, i.e. reducing unused JavaScript, CSS, etc.

Price: Free.


Linkbuilding Tools

Link Building for SaaS is one of the most important components to dominating Google and driving MRR.

Help A Reporter Out

Help A Reporter Out connects you with journalists looking to do write-ups and stories across a plethora of indutries, one of which specifically being SaaS/Software. This is the perfect place to pick up backlinks and build brand awareness if you have a unique product offering.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Scale your link building efforts fast, with zero to minimal required effort to manage
  • Directly connect with journalists and land links at huge, well-known businesses in your industry
  • Well, it’s free! It takes a bit of time and effort to go through and submit requests, but we’ve seen clients we’ve coached on link building land some of the best links we’ve ever seen using HARO

Price: Free


SEO Analysis Tools: The Essentials

These are the simply must-haves for SEO performance tracking and analysis. If you are using no other tools and are bootstrapping to save every dollar, these three tools will take you most of the way.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics should make any SEO tools list, as it’s the most basic and primary tool you should be using on a daily basis to track performance. With Google Analytics 4 being rolled out across all accounts in July 2023, a whole new powerful experience is coming to take performance tracking to new heights.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Setup goal tracking to monitor SEO performance across demo/trial sign-ups, as well as revenue and other relevant KPIs which can be mapped back against organic performance
  • Includes all of the SEO indicators you need to monitor leading indicators on performance (outside of keyword position tracking, which is better suited for Ahrefs or SEMRush)
  • Monitor campaign performance across all digital marketing channels, including Google Ads

Price: Free.


Google Search Console

Google Search Console is one of the most underused, yet most powerful tools on this list. Most SaaS organizations have it set up, but don’t use GSC to its full power when it comes to keyword and topic ideation. If you know your way around this tool and understand how to dig into performance at a granular level, it can completely change your SEO performance.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Access to direct organic data for your website, allowing you to dive in at a page or query level, allowing for technical and on-page optimization
  • Easily manage crawling and indexing of your website – vital for technical SEO performance
  • Keep a pulse on your organic performance with the most raw data directly from Google

Price: Free.


Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio is a tool for converting datasets into customizable reporting and dashboards, which can be shared easily internally, or externally. There’s endless customization on the appearance and what datasets you can pull in with third-party connectors.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Build powerful dashboards (for free) to showcase SEO and other marketing channel performance mapped back against KPIs
  • Easily integrates with almost any tool/application using third-party connectors and API to pull in live data
  • Great for SaaS brands with a low/no budget that want to build customized dashboards – it has a bit of a learning curve compared to other paid drag and drop tools, but you have full control over the look and feel, as well as data you’re pulling in

Price: Free.

Is there a free version? Yes.


User Experience Tools

User experience tools give us great insights into optimizing for more conversions, such as demo sign-ups or trial starts.

HotJar

HotJar’s positioning is simply awesome – on their homepage, they state “Understand how users behave on your site, what they need, and how they feel, fast.” This perfectly sums up what HotJar allows you to do – quickly capture screen recordings and heatmaps of your website users, and understand how they interact with your website – extremely powerful.

Why it’s useful for SaaS SEO:

  • Find out how users use your actual product by monitoring their movements and clicks.
  • Spot patterns and trends to develop a deeper understanding of your users.
  • Designers now have an easier way to validate ideas and get buy-in for designs.

Price: Starting at $39 per month.

Is there a trial? You can use HotJar for up to 35 sessions per month free, forever.


Final thoughts on The Best Tools for SEO for SaaS Companies

Everyone has their own flavor of favorite tools they use.

These are ours, and exactly what we use on a daily basis internally and for our clients.

Remember – tools are only one step of the game – the rest comes from strategy and execution.

Struggling to grow organic revenue, trials and/or demos booked? If you’d like to learn how we can help you grow faster and overcome those hurdles, book a Free Grow Faster Session with our team.

A few things you should know:

We love providing value and giving away our expertise to help SaaS brands grow. Here are two ways we can help you grow faster:

  1. Book your Free Grow Faster Session. Looking to work with a proven partner that can help you massively scale your demo and trial conversions? Our team will take a look at your current situation and provide guidance on how to quickly scape up and double down on your demo and trial conversions. Book a Free Grow Faster Session and we’ll walk you through it step-by-step.

  1. Learn from our resources for free. We create weekly content and share with our audience the exact steps and strategies we use for our clients to help them grow faster. Check out our blog, as well as our resources which include templates, guides, and other tools to help you on your journey.

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