A lot of SaaS blogs publish every week and still can’t answer the question leadership eventually asks: what did content bring in? The posts get traffic, the traffic doesn’t turn into signups or demos, and nobody can say which page helped close a deal.
The cause is usually the strategy behind the posts. Somebody decided what to publish without deciding who it was for, which pages buyers read right before they choose a tool, or how anyone would know it worked.
This guide covers the six decisions behind a SaaS content strategy, in the order I’d make them. It focuses on written, search-led content: the articles and pages that buyers find on Google and in AI answers like ChatGPT. Video, social, and webinars can support that work, but they’re not the subject here.
I’m a B2B SaaS writer and SEO strategist, and what follows comes from what I’ve seen work at the companies I write for. You’ll also get a free template that turns these decisions into a 90-day publishing plan.
What a SaaS content strategy has to decide
A SaaS content strategy is the set of decisions that tells your team what to publish, in what order, who writes it, and how you’ll judge it. The decisions count for more than the document they live in. These are the six I’d make, in this order:
- Who you’re writing for. The buyer, the people who sign off, and the words they use.
- How you decide what to publish. The inputs that turn into page ideas.
- What to publish first. The order, which decides how quickly content pays off.
- How your product shows up. Where the product belongs in each page, and where it doesn’t.
- Where it gets seen. Google and AI answers first, everything else as support.
- Who does the work, and what it costs. In-house, freelance, or agency.
After those come two practical questions: what to report, and what a 90-day plan looks like for a real SaaS category.
Decision 1: Who you’re writing for
Every SaaS purchase has more than one reader. Someone searches for a tool, someone signs off on the budget, and someone has to use it every day. In a project management purchase, that could be an operations lead comparing tools, a finance lead checking the price, and a team lead worried about the switch.
Each of them asks a different question. The operations lead wants to know which tool handles cross-team projects. The finance lead wants the real cost at 40 seats. The team lead wants to know how long the migration takes. A page written for one of them won’t answer the others, so decide who each page is for before anyone writes it.
Page types tend to map to readers, which makes the decision easier:
| Page type | Main reader | The question it answers |
| Alternatives page | The person evaluating tools | What else should I look at, and why? |
| Comparison (X vs Y) | The evaluator, and often the person who signs off | Which of these two fits a team like ours? |
| Pricing explainer | The person holding the budget | What will this really cost at our size? |
| Migration guide | The people who use it every day | How painful is the switch, and how long does it take? |
| Jobs-to-be-done guide | The team lead doing the work | How do I get this done, and does the product help? |
The best source for their questions is the words they already use. Read sales-call transcripts, support tickets, reviews, and the Reddit threads where buyers ask each other for advice. Write phrases down exactly as people said them. A buyer who says “we’ve outgrown Trello and Asana feels like overkill” has just given you an angle no keyword tool would suggest.
The free content strategy template has a Customer voice tab for exactly this, with a column for the problem behind each phrase and how close the buyer is to choosing.
Decision 2: How you decide what to publish
Page ideas come from five inputs. Each one points to a different kind of page.
Customer language. The phrases from sales calls and Reddit give you angles and searches that tools miss. They also match how buyers ask ChatGPT about their problem, because people type the same words into both.
Money keywords. These are the searches people make when they’re already choosing: “[competitor] alternatives”, “[competitor A] vs [competitor B]”, “[competitor] pricing”, “[competitor] review”, and “best [category] tools”. They turn into alternatives pages, comparison pages, and roundups. If you’re not sure where to start, finding bottom-of-funnel keywords begins with your sales team and your competitors’ names.
Jobs-to-be-done keywords. These are the searches for what your buyer is trying to get done, like “how to create a project plan” for a project management tool. They turn into guides where your product is part of the answer.
Competitor and AI-answer gaps. Look for searches where competitors rank and you don’t, then ask ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode the questions your buyers ask and note which brands come back. When a competitor keeps getting named in AI answers for your category and you don’t, the pages those answers cite show you what to build, and getting your brand into ChatGPT and Claude answers starts with pages like them.
Here’s how one input turns into pages. Say a buyer on a sales call says, “we’ve outgrown Trello, and Asana feels like overkill.” That one sentence points to an alternatives page for Trello users, an “Asana vs Trello” comparison, and a guide on running cross-team projects without a heavy tool. Each page answers a question that buyer already has.
What you already have. List your existing pages and check what each one ranks for in Search Console. A comparison page on page two of Google is a better starting point than a blank document.
Decision 3: What to publish first
The order decides how quickly content starts paying off. Here’s how I’d sequence it, depending on where a team is starting from.
If you already publish, start with what you have
Few SaaS teams start from zero. They have a blog with dozens or hundreds of posts, and some of those are bottom-of-funnel pages: a comparison page written two years ago, an alternatives post that slipped to page two, a pricing explainer nobody updated.
When I start working with a company that already publishes, that’s where we begin. We refresh and improve the existing bottom-of-funnel content before writing anything new at the top of the funnel, then work our way up from the bottom.
Improving a page usually means rewriting it for the reader who’s choosing, not the one who’s browsing. Add the comparison table, current pricing, screenshots of the product doing the job, and a clear verdict on who each option suits. Comparison pages that win the deal and alternatives articles for switching buyers each follow a structure you can copy.
Finding those pages takes an afternoon:
- In Search Console, open the Pages report for the last three months and filter for URLs or queries containing “alternatives”, “vs”, “pricing”, “review”, and “best”.
- Note each page’s average position. Pages sitting between positions 4 and 20 are the quickest to move, because they’re close.
- Open each one and check what a buyer would check: current pricing, a comparison table, screenshots of your product, and a clear recommendation.
- Rank the fixes by how close the page’s readers are to buying, then by how much work the fix needs.
This is usually the fastest win available, because the page already exists, already has some authority, and Google already knows what it’s about. A native advertising platforms guide I rewrote for Taboola went from about 47 US visits a month to 711 and #1 on Google, on the same URL. The Taboola rewrite changed the reader, the structure, and the depth, not the topic. Pages that have lost traffic over time are often the best candidates, and spotting content decay in Search Console shows you which ones.
If you’re starting from zero, start closest to a purchase
New SaaS blogs should publish the pages closest to a purchase first: alternatives pages, comparisons, and “best [category] tools” roundups. Then come the jobs your buyers need done, and awareness topics last.
My best client results came from pages like these:
- A software roundup I wrote for Softr reached more than $130K a month in traffic value at its peak.
- A best-apps article for Zapier ranks #1 and saves the company more than $20K a year in ad spend.
- One listing in my roundup of SaaS SEO agencies led to a $36K ARR deal for the agency in 10 days.
Each page type has its own structure, and bottom-of-funnel pages that lead to demos share a few traits worth copying.
Not every money keyword is worth chasing first
Some searches close to a purchase are hard to win. Searches for a competitor’s pricing usually go to the competitor’s own pricing page, and big “best software” terms attract the biggest review sites.
For a project management tool, “asana pricing” gets about 3,600 searches a month in the US but has a difficulty score of 69, while “clickup alternatives” gets 480 with a difficulty of 7. The alternatives page is the one a smaller SaaS can win this quarter. The worked example below shows the full list.
Decision 4: How your product shows up in the content
The product belongs inside the job the reader is trying to do. If someone searches “how to create a project plan”, the page should show them how to build one, with the plan template, the timeline view, and the screenshots from your product as part of the answer.
For the project management tool in the worked example below, a guide on “how to create a project plan” could run like this:
- what a project plan needs, in plain terms
- the steps to build one, each with a screenshot of the step in the product
- a downloadable or in-product template
- a short section on when a spreadsheet is enough, which builds trust with readers who aren’t ready to switch
The product carries half the page, and the page would still be useful to someone who never signs up.
A lot of SaaS blogs explain the problems their audience faces well and then mention their product once, in a banner at the bottom. That kind of banner is easy to skip. Showing the product doing the work, step by step, is what turns a reader into a trial.
Where the product doesn’t help with the job, leave it out of the page. Readers notice a forced mention.
The other half of this decision is what only you can put on the page. When I read 22 ranking articles on three B2B SaaS topics, 13 of them shared the same skeleton. What gets a SaaS page out of that pattern is input no competitor has: your product data, screenshots from real use, customer quotes, and the opinions of the people who build the product. Those inputs range from cheap to expensive, and getting B2B SaaS content out of the sameness pond can start with the cheapest of them.
Decision 5: Where it gets seen
For written, search-led content, Google and AI answers come first, because they bring readers who are already looking for a solution. Write each page so both can use it:
- Give a direct answer near the top.
- Use comparison tables with named products.
- Keep facts dated.
- Make each section make sense on its own, so AI answers can quote it.
Everything else supports the written page. Share it on LinkedIn and in your newsletter, hand it to the sales team for deals where that competitor comes up, and answer the community threads where buyers asked the question it covers. Repurpose the strongest pages into a LinkedIn post or a sales one-pager.
Check AI answers as part of your routine. Ask ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Mode the questions your buyers ask most, and note which brands and pages come back. If checking by hand gets slow, AI search visibility tools track those questions across AI answers for you. When a competitor keeps getting named and you don’t, look at the page the answer cites. It’s usually a comparison or a roundup, which tells you what to build next.
Getting those pages to rank also takes technical fixes, links, and regular refreshes, which is the work of a SaaS SEO process. New pages need links in particular. Link to each one from at least three related pages on your site the day it goes live, and build outside links where you can, through partners, guest posts, and lists that already rank.
Decision 6: Who does the work, and what it costs
There are three ways to staff a SaaS content program, and they cost very different amounts.
| Model | Typical cost | When it fits |
| In-house content marketer | A content marketing manager averages about $83,700 a year in base salary in the US (PayScale, September 2026), plus tools and benefits | Steady volume, deep product knowledge, and someone to own the plan |
| Freelance writer | $250 to $450 for a B2B blog post from an experienced generalist, and $800 to $1,500+ for comparison pages and case studies that need product testing or interviews | Specific page types and flexible volume |
| Agency | $5,000 to $15,000 a month on retainer | Strategy, writing, links, and reporting from one team |
For a Series A team, I’d usually suggest one in-house content lead who owns the strategy, plus freelancers for the bottom-of-funnel pages that need research and product testing. The freelance figures reflect what content writers charge in 2026, and the agency range reflects what content marketing agencies cost.
A simple way to choose: if you can’t name the person who owns the plan, hire or assign that person before buying any writing. If you have an owner but not enough hands, add freelancers for the pages that need the most research. If you need strategy, writing, links, and reporting at once and have the budget, an agency is the faster route.
If your team has $6,000 a month or more for SEO and wants strategy, content, and links handled together, Breaking B2B runs SEO programs for B2B and SaaS companies from that level. I work there as a content strategist, so treat that as a disclosure as much as a suggestion.
What to report, and when to expect results
Report two kinds of numbers. Leading indicators show the plan is moving:
- pages published and indexed
- positions for the target searches
- whether AI answers cite your pages
Lagging indicators show it’s paying off: trial signups, demo requests, and pipeline influenced by organic pages. Set up a GA4 key event on each page’s call to action before the page goes live, so the data exists when someone asks.
Check each page in Search Console at 4, 8, and 12 weeks. Refreshed pages usually move within weeks, because Google already trusts them. New pages often take three to six months to rank for anything competitive.
A monthly report can fit on one screen:
- what was published or refreshed, with links
- positions for the target searches, against last month
- AI answers that cited your pages
- signups and demos from organic pages, by landing page
- what’s next month, and why
For leadership, one page is enough: the goal, the 90-day plan, and the numbers that show progress. If you’re choosing between metrics, the SEO KPIs worth reporting at each stage change as a program matures, and measuring content marketing ROI starts from these same per-page numbers.
A worked 90-day plan: a project management tool
Here’s what these decisions look like for a common SaaS category. The company is illustrative: a project management tool competing with Asana, ClickUp, and monday.com. The search data is real, from SE Ranking’s US database in October 2026.
I put the keywords into the content strategy template, sorted into three tiers: money keywords, jobs-to-be-done keywords, and awareness topics. The template then scored and ranked them.
The plan that comes out of it is straightforward:
- Month 1: “clickup alternatives”, “project management software for small business”, and “best project management tools”. All three have low difficulty (7 to 10) and readers who are choosing a tool.
- Month 2: “monday alternatives”, “asana alternatives”, “asana vs trello”, and “clickup vs asana”.
- Month 3: the first jobs-to-be-done guides, “how to create a project plan”, “resource allocation in project management”, and “how to manage multiple projects”, each showing the product doing the job.
- Later: competitor pricing searches like “asana pricing” have far more volume, but their difficulty scores of 67 to 69 mean the brands’ own pages win them. “Gantt chart” gets 165,000 searches a month and has a difficulty of 86. It’s an awareness term, and it’s a poor first bet for a smaller SaaS.
If this company already had a blog, the first step would come before month 1: find its existing comparison and alternatives pages, check where they rank, and improve those first.
I run my own site the same way, with the pages closest to a purchase first. Comparing the three months to October 22, 2026 with the three months before, Search Console shows my clicks rising from 1,060 to 3,860. My site isn’t a SaaS product, so treat that as proof of the order, not as a SaaS benchmark.
Mistakes that stall SaaS content
These are the patterns I see most often when a SaaS blog publishes steadily and can’t show results, each with the fix:
- Awareness posts before comparison pages. Check whether your comparison and alternatives pages exist and rank before you write another top-of-funnel post.
- New posts instead of better old ones. Improve the bottom-of-funnel pages you already have first.
- The product as a banner. Show it doing the job inside the page, with screenshots.
- Planning for Google only. Ask ChatGPT your buyers’ questions regularly and note who it names.
- Reporting traffic. Report signups and demos from organic pages, with traffic as context.
- The same skeleton as everyone else. Add one input per page that competitors don’t have.
SaaS content strategy FAQs
What should a SaaS content strategy include?
A SaaS content strategy should include who you’re writing for, how you decide what to publish, the order you’ll publish in, how your product shows up in the content, where the content gets seen, who does the work and what it costs, and the numbers you’ll report. Put those decisions on one page so the team can act on them.
How long does a SaaS content strategy take to show results?
Refreshed bottom-of-funnel pages often move within a few weeks, because Google already knows them. New pages usually take three to six months to rank for anything competitive. Check each page in Search Console at 4, 8, and 12 weeks so you know which way it’s heading.
How many blog posts should a SaaS company publish each month?
Publish as many pages as your team can research, write, and keep updated properly. In my experience, two thorough comparison pages that rank bring more signups than ten generic posts that don’t.
Would you rather have the plan built for you? My content strategy service covers the customer research and keyword work, plus a content audit and a 90-day roadmap. If you’re not sure which pages your buyers need to see first, book a call with me, and let’s work it out from your own search data.
