People love to follow trends, and SaaS businesses are no different. From ultimate guides and authoritative content to listicles and “X vs Y” articles, everyone’s chasing SEO hacks, link-building strategies, and optimizing with AI-driven tools.
If you’re a SaaS startup now betting on an SEO content strategy to fuel growth, you’re on the right track. But every successful SEO strategy starts with solid keyword research.
The real question is: Are you doing your keyword research right?
Most SaaS keyword research fails because it starts with the wrong question.
In the age of AI-generated content, it’s tempting to follow trends and pump out generic blog posts. But SaaS startups need to take a different approach. Rather than relying on AI-generated fluff, the best strategy is to follow first principles.
Focus on writing content that solves real customer problems — not just what AI predicts people might search for.
For SaaS startups, a strong content strategy must begin with:
“What painful business problem does my product solve better than anyone else?“
If you start there, keyword research becomes a growth strategy, not just another SEO checklist.
Step 1: Start With Your Product
Forget ToFU (Top-of-Funnel) content. Forget “Ultimate Guides.” Forget “What is X?”
Start with this: What is the one job my product does so well that people will pay for it?
This is where your SEO strategy should begin—at the bottom of the funnel (BoFU), where buying decisions happen. This is where revenue lives.
Once you ace this part, you can expand to the rest of the funnel.
Step 2: Focus on Problem-Aware Keywords
In the age of content saturation, focus on customers who are problem-aware. These are the people who already know they have a problem and are actively seeking a solution.
In the age of content saturation, focus on customers who are problem-aware. These are people who already know they have a problem and are actively seeking a solution.
If you haven’t yet defined your ideal customer profile (ICP), this SEO strategy will help you refine it.
Why? Because the people who sign up for your product will help you build that profile. They’ll tell you:
Who they are
What they do
Their company size and revenue
This data doesn’t just help with segmentation—it also allows you to price your product correctly and build features that scale.
Problem-aware customers are already searching for solutions to a specific problem they’re facing. They’re not searching for broad industry terms like “AI-powered customer engagement platform.” They’re looking for practical solutions:
- “How to send automated NPS surveys after customer onboarding”
- “CRM that assigns leads based on location automatically”
- “Tool to send renewal reminders based on product usage”
Low search volume? Yes.
High buying intent? Absolutely.
(For more on identifying buyer intent keywords, check out Search Engine Journal on buyer intent keywords.)
Step 3: Adopt a New Keyword Research Approach
Another way to find problem-aware keywords:
Give your product details to AI tools like ChatGPT or DeepSeek and ask to generate questions customers might ask to find your product. These are real, solution-based searches with high intent.
For example, for a text-based video editing SaaS software, the questions people might ask
“How do I add text overlays and captions to a video for YouTube?”
This is a long-tail, problem-specific query with high intent, helping you rank for solutions that your product offers directly.
Step 4: Prioritize Long-Tail Keywords for AI Search
In the age of AI-based search, users are becoming more comfortable providing detailed context in their search queries. They’re no longer searching for simple, broad keywords. Instead, they’re typing out entire paragraphs about their needs and problems.
So, in short, long-tail keywords matter more in AI-driven search.
AI tools need context to return relevant answers. So, the more descriptive your content is about the solution your product provides, the better. This shift in user behavior makes long-tail keywords even more valuable. When users provide more context, AI will look for content that matches that context precisely.
The more solution-focused and specific your content is, the better the chances it will rank.
Step 5: Expand From the Bottom Up
Once you own your BoFU keywords, you can focus on creating MoFU and ToFU content. In this order. Once you retain your customers and improve your MMR, you can start on authority content, ultimate guides, and so on.
Because now you know:
- What pain points matter
- What features convert
- What ICP language to use
ToFU content without this insight is just noise. Google doesn’t need another “Complete Guide to SaaS Marketing.”
TL, DR
SaaS SEO is not a traffic game. It’s a revenue game. Rank for problems only your product can solve. Have a problem-solving approach in the initial stage itself. Start from BoFU (Bottom-of-Funnel) and move up to MoFU (Middle-of-Funnel) and then to ToFU (Top-of-Funnel). Write descriptive content that puts your product as the ideal solution, and deliver it.
That’s how you do SaaS keyword research, and that’s how you start building a content strategy that scales.
Need a Dedicated Content Marketer for Your SaaS?