Here's the SEO playbook for SaaS:

P0: Ranking on Branded Queries

Why it's important

The first thing you need to do, no matter what is rank on your branded queries.

In other words, if my SaaS is called "BlogSEO" then I need to make sure I rank #1 on Google for "BlogSEO".

If you're not ranking on your branded queries, stop any marketing you're doing and start focusing on this immediately. Dancing on TikTok & making UGCs is useless if, when people hear about your product, they can't find it on Google by typing its name...

How to do it

You need to make search engines understand your SaaS's name (your "brand") is actually one. To do that, you want to have strong consistency across many different places in how your brand is spelled, and described.

So in practice:

Create social media accounts with consistent descriptions. Cross link everything (e.g: have your YouTube channel hosts links to your Facebook page, your website etc.). Create a X account, Facebook page, YouTube channel, LinkedIn Company page, Instagram account, and TikTok. Add all your social links in your site's footer.
Side note: Consider using EDM (Exact Domain Match). There's no better way to rank #1 "Best Cashback" than using a domain exactly matching the query you're looking to rank for. If you haven't decided on your brand name yet, this might be worth considering. (Yes I do this every time with my websites:
JSON-LD & Schema: use the sameAs & organization schema to list all your socials accounts to reinforce the consistency signal.

P1: Ranking on Commercial & High-intent Queries

This section is about capturing the 3% of the market in "buying mode".

What to do in practice

Listicles: This also helps with ranking on your branded queries. Listicles are heavily cited by AI (~43%+ of top cited content by ChatGPT comes from listicle according to Ahrefs) and they help positioning your brand as the same category as other competing SaaS in your niche. Note: You can also buy or exchange placements in other listicles. Getting a backlink from it is better but not strictly required if you mostly care about AI citations.
Comparison pages: Like listicles, LLMs love comparison pages, especially if you have detailed, up-to-date tables. The richer the data you provide to compare your tool with competitors, and the higher you'll rank. You can then use programmatic SEO to create VS pages.
Integrations: Integrations are not just product work, they're also one of the most powerful marketing tool for SaaS (more on this in the next section). Then you want to have one page per integration, and a page listing these integration. This will help you rank on keywords like "[Your tool / app category] + WordPress / HubSpot / Salesforce / [....]" which convert very well. Examples: "Email sender for Airtable", "Affiliate platform for Shopify", etc.

P2: Building Domain & Brand Authority

Why it matters

Google determines a PageRank score for your domain & pages by evaluating how many backlinks you get, and the PageRank scores of the domains that gave you those links.

How to build authority the indie-hacker way

Here's how I do it for SaaS, and what has allowed me to reach DR 56 for BlogSEO in just a few months:

Integrations (again?): Most big platforms like Salesforce, Shopify, etc. allow you to get listed on their marketplace as an officially approved app. Once you get listed on their marketplace, you get a very strong backlink, highly qualified traffic from that platform, and a new acquisition channel for free. It's really a no-brainer.
Reviews: Setup a Trustpilot / G2 / Capterra account, and ask for reviews. This builds social proof and brand mentions that LLMs love to look at. This is the best way to build brand authority, and it will increase your conversion rate if you have a good score because most brands deliver a shitty service and so they only get bad reviews. Don't be afraid to ask your happy customers for reviews.
Affiliate program: This is the easiest way to get backlinks on autopilot once you have a sort of product market fit. Have a dedicated page promoting your affiliate program on your site, and ideally, make the commission generous so people want to promote your tool. Affonso by @Silvestro is by far the best affiliate platform for SaaS.
Contextually relevant backlinks: the most powerful links come from sites in your niche, placed inside relevant content. BlogSEO automates that.
Directories: getting listed on directories still work in 2026, provided these are high-quality ones. As a rule of thumb, if it's free, you're probably wasting your time (with a few exceptions like Uneed, Product Hunt, etc.). The more specific the directory, the better. For example, if you're building an AI tool, consider listing it on There's an AI For That, and Toolify. These 2 directories are still bringing me customers 3 months after I listed on them.

Vincent Josse

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