37% of B2B marketers say that growing a high-quality lead pipeline is their #1 priority in 2025.
Luckily, there are so many channels at your disposal today that you can tap into to grow your SaaS business.
SEO blog is one such channel.
Umm, I guess, that last statement doesn’t do justice to the power of SEO.
Shall we reframe it? Hell yeah!
“SEO blogs are among the best lead generation channels out there, especially for B2B marketers.”
Justice served.
Now, what makes me say that about SEO?
Well, I’m not exaggerating things here. I’m not the only fan boy of SEO. In a 2024 report by LinkedIn, SEO blog was voted to be the 3rd most popular content type among B2B marketers. The crown went to Video. Infographics was the first runner up.
SEO is the 3rd most popular content type among B2B marketers.
SaaS SEO, at large, is not that different from regular SEO strategy that you might employ for any startup. However, there are certain nuances to SaaS SEO. And a good SEO agency helps you nail those nuances to enable you to scale with content.
Read the next sections to understand “How you can assess SaaS SEO agencies the right way, and set forth the right first step to build a lasting business relationship with your SEO agency partner?” In this blog, we are sharing how founders can politely assess multiple search engine optimization agencies, and then choose the best one for their startup.
1. “Data Obsession” Is A Big Green Flag For Any SaaS SEO Marketing Agency or Client. Inclination To Baseless Opinions Is A Big Red Flag.
You should have zero respect for any sort of opinion when it comes to SEO. Especially your own opinions. When it comes to devising an SEO strategy you have to be very critical, and be obsessed with data. I repeat,
“Be obsessed with data.”
Honestly, F*$@ opinions.
In SEO, there is no place for opinions.
You are dealing with search algorithms. It’s more of mathematics than philosophy. So, have a ZTP for opinions in your SaaS SEO marketing team.
Having said that, if you are an early-stage founder, please do your startup a BIG FAVOUR. Don’t screw up your SaaS SEO marketing strategy with “I Think, I Feel, and I Guess” sort of sentences. Founders do that a lot.
You’ve a good SaaS product/platform idea, how about you focus on building that? Why do you want to show that you are an expert in everything? It not just looks desperate, but negatively impacts the marketing outcomes for your own business.
- How about playing on your strengths?
- How about finding good marketers to take care of SEO-led marketing for you? Hire in-house SEO experts, or outsource to potent SEO agencies with a proven track record.
- How about you intervene in SEO activities only when either SEO professionals voluntarily ask for help, or when they are not able to deliver the results that they promised in accordance with the timeline?
Also, for god’s sake, if you are just starting out with SEO for the first time, can you please stop being that annoying founder who asks your SEO guy to get you a MQL pipeline from the very next moment you hire them? Can you just spend an hour learning about SEO? After all, you will be investing 10s of 1000s of dollars into SEO marketing. Almost every month/quarter. I guess, it will pay off really well, if you educate yourself a little about how SEO works. Well, here is a spoiler for you:
“SEO takes time, effort, and resources.”
How much time do you founders need to understand this basic thing? C’mon, you guys are smart lads; don’t prove me wrong.
If any SEO professional knew a magical spell, if they were so charismatic that they could rank on search engines just by putting up content on the web, they wouldn’t be working for you!!! It would have been the other way around.
By the way, do you know that revision is important for memorising concepts? If you know that then you must revise periodically that “SEO takes time.”
Do you really think that just because you are publishing content your company could rank for any keyword and get a lot of leads that easily? If you do, well, I’m sorry to break it to you that we are not in the 2010s anymore; it’s 2025. SEO algorithms have evolved. Not everyone can rank in the top 10 on search results pages by publishing just average content.
In the name of frugality, many founders hire consultants who are super affordable or negotiable, or SEO talent that are available for pennies. Yes, sometimes, you will hit a jackpot, you will find good teams/talent at unbelievably low costs, and you will be all gaga about your SEO hire.
But most of the time, with a low budget and a crappy founder attitude, all you get is a guy who just knows how to publish content and fill it with keywords. Nothing more. It won’t be the right strategy to scale with SEO. I’m not asking you to make a big hole in your pocket, but c’mon, you gotta have a good SEO budget for good SEO results.
CAUTION: Sometimes, even the SEO specialists who command very high charges/salary fail to deliver because you hired someone who has not much understanding about your domain.
SEO-led marketing needs a good SEO strategist i.e., great people with good understanding of the market, and a great understanding of how search engines work.
Cool, the final takeaway for you here is that don’t be an ‘S’ in SEO if you want to get Dollars and Pounds flowing for you from your ‘$￡O’ efforts.
2. Don’t Be A Cocky Crass When Evaluating SEO Partners. Be Respectful.
I’ve helped a few founders. Together, we have hustled to make their startup a success. And more than often I’ve been successful at gaining good traction. However, I’ve also met founders who in their first text would ask “How many leads can you get?”
And it’s okay if you ask how many leads one can get for you in a respectful way. But if you are being disrespectful, you are just being a bad person. If being a ‘founder’ has gotten to your head, you have to be a really high-paying client to find a good agency. Otherwise, your bad attitude will attract bad teams and/or bad results for your startup.
“Why am I saying that?” Here is one of the incidents that happened to me.
Founder: How many leads can you get?
SEO Guy (Me): We will have to audit your content, use your current SEO performance as a benchmark for base conversion rates, assess the industry reports to understand what’s a good conversion rate in the industry, carry out 1 or 2 targeted competitor research, and then we can estimate the same.
Founder: If you can’t even put a number to my question, what sort of marketer are you?
(Me In My Head: Certainly the one who is not going to work with you.)
It’s not my job to educate you. On top of that you are trying to be cocksure. GFY, you piece of SEO-illiterate!
I didn’t respond to that question. It’s okay if you are not well informed, no one is expecting that either, but if you are disdainful, I’m better without you. Curt is okay, but being disrespectful and projecting yourself as cocky while you are dumb is such a bad start.
I mean, this is necessary for freelancers and agency owners that you should not work with energy suckers.
And this applies to clients as well, don’t work with agencies that are energy suckers, that always keeps you on your toe in a wrong way. Because they will affect your other work and your headspace; it doesn’t matter then how good a shield you have for nuisance.
So, the rule of thumb is to stay away from toxic clients and partners who are not collaborative, supportive, and helpful.
I’m okay with someone who wants a transactional “just results” type of work-work professional bond. But toxicity is a big RED FLAG.
- Also, avoid bargaining over budget.
- Don’t make the SOW proposals too conditional and complex.
- Don’t add too many interdependencies on both teams.
- Prioritise effective collaboration for maximum outcomes. But be loosely coupled on collaboration fronts.
- Avoid what could drag you back or slow down.
- And for best results always speak with the team you will be working with prior to kicking off the deal.
3. Here Are The 5 Requests That You Can Make To Be A Nagging Founder Who Every SEO Agency and Marketing Freelancer Love
Ask for past client references who you can speak with.
Only request this when you’ve a verifiable business presence, and you are working with a SEO freelancer or SEO agency for the first time. Remember, if you are a founder without an existing digital presence, you have no right to make this request.
Ask about the performance metrics for the recent clients.
Try to get a hang of their SEO approach and the traffic, leads, revenue, CTR, conversion outcomes. Dive deeper into this: Budget. Team structure. Team expertise. Industry exposure. Client-agency relationship. Collaboration frequency. Challenges faced. How much did they bring down the cost per lead, how much they increased the traffic wrt the investment. You got the theme, right?
Request for a free audit of your website to a SEO agency or freelancer. And ask them if they can help.
This is fine as long as you are not expecting a detailed audit with strategy insights. Agencies can auto generate an audit using SEO auditing tools like Semrush, Ahref, etcetera. If you are asking for a detailed insight or competitor analysis, better make a paid request.
Ask them “What outcomes can be expected?”
Voluntarily share what budget you have in mind, or if you are totally new to SEO. Ask them, what budget would they expect, but then give them a target like 100 signups/month, or 1000 leads/month. Give them something to start with.
Ask them what needs to be done so that you can start seeing at least some traction within the first one or two months.
Because a lot of agencies also exploit “SEO takes time” as an excuse for bad SEO marketing. I totally understand that founders have every right to ask if things would definitely work out, esp bootstrapped founders. Often, it is a good idea to use social and email marketing alongside SEO. Because social and email can at least generate interest in the product/platform, and that can be a valid signal that the strategies are working out. SEO you can either do it at scale quickly or go slow betting very high on content quality, so that the same can be used in PUSH-led content distribution. Yes, it might cost a little extra, but it is better to establish trust and confidence in your SEO agency partner or your freelance SaaS marketing consultant than to infuse money for 3-4 months only to stand right where you started.
Say ‘YES’ to being Awesome SaaS Founder
The above points might sound a little bit excessive, but agency owners understand the drill as long as it is respectful and a win-win. You won’t be disliked for being a curious soul. None of the above five makes you a founder stinking with a bad attitude. That’s all agencies and freelancers are looking for apart from the on-time invoice payments.
I hope that these points help you find a more compatible SEO agency for you, and makes you a better client.
