Why Are My SaaS Blog Posts Struggling to Rank on Google? 8 Reasons and What to Do

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Your blog posts should be ranking for thousands of keywords.

And these rankings should be driving tens of thousands of organic traffic.

And consequently, more product users.

But so far, your blog posts are still lying on page 3, dying from the lack of attention from searchers.

Why?

Because of some issues with your content and website.

Some of these issues are in your control, while others are slightly out of your control.

But regardless of which group they fall into, let’s dive into 8 issues that may deny your blog posts of high rankings on Google.

Keep in mind that these are issues that affect search rankings rather than organic traffic. While they’re often related, high search rankings don’t automatically guarantee high organic traffic.

1. The page does not meet search intent

The whole idea of search is about people looking for information to solve a problem.

So, if they visit your page and are unable to find information to solve their problem, the page has failed.

The searcher may need to return to the search engine results pages (SERPs) to visit another page.

If many searchers repeat this action, it will signal to Google that your page is a poor resource for the keyword.

And this will lead to the page losing its rankings. In some cases, the page may not rank at all.

How to understand search intent

Whenever I write for SaaS clients, one of the strongest foundations I lay for a content piece is understanding search intent.

The popular categories for search intent are informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional intents.

Sometimes, an easy way to understand search intent is to perform a Google search for your target keyword.

What pages are Google showing for the keyword? Blog posts? Product pages? Landing pages? Free tools?

But understanding search intent goes beyond that.

Search intent for a keyword can also differ depending on who’s searching it.

For example, a project manager at a billion-dollar company and a freelancer are looking for different information when they search “project management software.”

The project manager may be more concerned about robust features for a large team and less about the cost. Meanwhile, the freelancer may be more concerned about cost and less about extensive features.

If you run a project management software, you’ll tailor your content according to the information your ideal buyer is looking for.

So, it’s not just a question of, “What’s a searcher looking for?”

But a question of, “What’s my ideal buyer looking for when they search this term?”

Because for a SaaS business, you’re not just providing information to solve a problem but also positioning your product as the best solution for the problem.

So, meet the search intent of your ideal buyer in your content.

2. Your website has no topical relevance for target keywords

Your SaaS blog probably caters to topics relevant to your product.

For example:

• A social media management tool will publish content about social media.
• A sales prospecting tool will publish content about sales and prospecting.
• A chatbot tool will have content about customer support.

When you write tens of blog posts about a wide topic, you develop topical relevance for this wide topic in the eyes of Google.

If you publish a post that veers away from this main topic, the post may struggle to rank. And even if it ranks, it will likely lose the ranking.

One popular example of this is HubSpot. 

Because of its high domain authority, the blog ranked for topics like “how to create a shrug emoji” and “what is bitcoin?”

But because these topics are irrelevant to HubSpot’s topical relevance (sales, marketing, and CRM), it lost the rankings.

If a blog post is not ranking, it may just be because it’s great content on a topic you have no authority on.

How to ensure topical relevance

Plan the topic clusters for your blog.

These should be topics most relevant to your product and ideal buyers.

Then, create multiple blog posts around each cluster.

As your blog posts rank, you start developing topical authority in the eyes of Google.

Bernard Huang, founder of Clearscope, said in an interview:

“Google’s gonna say, okay well, if you have written about anything surrounding accounting software, then how well is that set of content doing in Google search?”

So, ensure new blog posts are around topics your blog is known for.

3. Page information is outdated

You may write one of the best pages about a topic and pat yourself on the back. But in a year, this page may be outdated.

How?

The industry has evolved. New information is now available about the topic.

If readers land on your current page, they’ll miss out on this new information.

And if this goes on, Google may punish your page with lower rankings and push an updated page to higher positions.

Of course, rates of evolution differ across various industries and topics. For example, AI will evolve faster than accounting.

So, if you’re in a fast-evolving industry, your content can become outdated pretty fast.

And this can harm your search rankings.

How to update blog pages

One key way to combat this is to plan updates at specified periods. For example, updates can be every quarter.

Another consideration is how important a page is to your business. So, you can plan an update every quarter for your most important pages in terms of traffic and conversions.

Then, plan updates every 6 months (or year) for less important pages.

In addition to that, plan updates according to how fast a topic evolves. This means frequent updates for fast-evolving topics and less frequent updates for slow-evolving topics.

Other things I keep in mind when updating content are screenshots and videos. In SaaS products, interfaces change. And if you’re showcasing your product in blog posts, product screenshots should be of the latest interface.

This way, you’ll maintain consistency if a visitor signs up for your product after reading the blog post.

Update your pages to reflect new changes in the topic. Your search rankings and readers will thank you.

4. Your target keywords are difficult to rank for

You’ve created content you feel is the best about a topic.

You’ve done on-page SEO and optimized the page to engage visitors.

Even experts have told you it’s a great resource.

And this is a content piece that can bring in tens of users monthly if it ranks.

But no matter how hard you try, you can’t crack the top 10.

One possible reason?

Keyword difficulty.

While keyword difficulty is measured differently across SEO tools, the main factors that determine it are:

• How well the current ranking pages serve the search intent
• The domain authority of the ranking domains
• The number of backlinks to the ranking pages

Because of the importance of some topics to your product and audience, you have to create content about them.

But it may be almost impossible to rank these pages, especially if your website has a low domain authority.

For example, Ahrefs doesn’t rank on the first page for the keyword “what is seo.”

Even Semrush is in position 8.

And these are authoritative sources in the SEO space.

That’s how hard it is to rank for some keywords.

How to rank for difficult keywords

The solution to this is long-term.

First, build good backlinks to your blog posts. These are backlinks from top websites in your industry.

Second, create a topic cluster around pillar pages. Doing this will give your website topical relevance that can help you rank for difficult keywords.

Third, create content and pages that naturally attract backlinks. These can be research-based content or free tools. 

For instance, Ahrefs attracted over 11K backlinks to its free website traffic checker page, which also helps its overall domain authority.

And by improving your domain authority, you increase the chances of every page on your website ranking for its target keywords.

Then, put a lot of effort into low-difficulty keywords that your website can rank for. Luckily, these low-difficulty keywords are usually long-tail keywords with better-defined search intents.

So, if your page is competing with top domains for difficult keywords, you may struggle to rank on Google.

5. Page has technical issues 

Sometimes, technical issues may prevent your pages from ranking high on Google.

These technical issues include:

• Pages not indexed: If your page is not on the Google index, it won’t appear in search results.
• Poor page speed: If it takes ages for your page to load, Google may pull your page down the rankings. This is because poor page speed is a bad experience for searchers.
• No SSL certificate: The minimum security required for a website is to have an SSL certificate (https instead of http). Having no SSL certificate means attackers can steal your visitors’ data.

I’ve just listed a few technical issues websites have. But there are even more.

If you have these issues, they can affect your search rankings negatively.

How to resolve technical issues

Want to see some of these issues? Log in to your Google Search Console account. 

You’ll see the pages that are currently indexed. You can also manually submit non-indexed pages.

The Google Core Web Vitals section also shows your website speed on both desktop and mobile.

Another tool I use is the Ahrefs webmaster tools.

This tool goes into more detail about technical issues on your website.

Not only that, but you also get a summary of these issues in your email inbox.

If you have technical issues on your website, hire a technical SEO to take care of them.

6. Visitors spend low time on page

If visitors spend 10 seconds or less on a page before they bounce, there’s a great chance they didn’t get what they’re looking for.

And Google takes note of this.

Imagine this situation.

Google referred 100 searchers to your page. Ninety out of them spent a few seconds on your page, clicked back to the search results, and clicked another page.

Then, they spent minutes on this other page and didn’t come back to Google. Google will likely conclude that this other page is more valuable than your page.

And Google will push this page above yours.

Low time on page is a sign of dissatisfaction. Apart from losing search rankings, it will also harm your blog conversions.

How to boost time on page

First, what is a good time on page?

It depends on your industry and the type of information on your page.

I couldn’t find definitive research on this. And there’s probably no definitive number that works for every business.

For a SaaS business, I’d recommend at least 3 minutes of time on page across your website.

How can you increase time on page for your blog?

First, structure your page for both readers and skimmers. This includes writing short sentences, short paragraphs, clear headings, and bullet points.

Doing this makes the reading experience easier.

Second, add other content formats like screenshots, infographics, videos, and audio to your page. An interactive element like interactive demos also improves page experience. These engage visitors and keep them on the page.

Third, implement smart internal linking. Apart from increasing time on page, this can increase your page views and reduce bounce rate.

While Google Analytics is the default tool most websites use to measure time on page, it doesn’t provide the time on page for visitors who visit a single page.

To go around this, I use Microsoft Clarity. 

Microsoft Clarity calculates time on page for every visitor and also provides recordings that show how visitors behave on your page.

Increasing time on page can help your search rankings.

7. The page is relatively new

Even if you’ve written valuable content and built backlinks, some pages need time to rank for your target keywords.

If your target keywords have an obvious search intent that some pages already meet, you’ll likely struggle to outrank those pages in two weeks.

How to rank a new page

For this particular situation, the best step is to wait.

According to an Authority Hacker study, the median age of content pages at position 1 on Google is 1,400 days.

Of course, this is not saying that pages rank higher only because they get older. But it takes time for a page to build the authority that will make it rank for target keywords.

And the time is long if you’re targeting a difficult keyword.

So, wait for some time before concluding that a page is unable to rank for your target keywords.

If you want your new pages to rank faster, target long-tail and low difficulty keywords.

8. Your SaaS brand is unknown

Twenty years ago, this meant little.

But now that AI can summarize everything, brand power has become so important, even in search rankings.

If your brand is relatively unknown, you may struggle to outrank more established brands on the search results pages.

Why?

Searchers already know and trust them.

Imagine this situation.

You searched for a term on Google related to CRM. One of the results is HubSpot, and another is a brand you’ve never heard of.

Which result will you click on?

If you’re like most people, you’ll click on HubSpot. And if you get the information you need, you won’t return to the search results pages.

This is the mere exposure effect in action.

If multiple searchers repeat this action, Google will push the established brands above your page.

And this may occur despite your page providing better information.

So, how do you know your SaaS brand is unknown?

One thing I do is put the brand name in an SEO tool like Semrush.

Then, I’ll repeat the steps with competitors’ brand names.

If a competitor’s brand name gets 10K monthly searches and yours gets 1K, there’s a good chance the competitor’s brand is more popular.

Of course, there are other, more complex ways to understand brand popularity (social media followers, number of mentions, etc.), but this is quick and easy.

How to get your brand into the head of your ideal audience

Combating this problem is a long-term process.

One way to build your SaaS brand is to consistently create useful blog posts. Once a visitor reads a few of your pages and gets useful information, they’ll start to trust your brand.

And they’ll likely click your page whenever they see it on the search engine results page.

Another important way is to be active on social media. This is not just to promote product offers, but to provide useful information to followers.

By doing this, followers will associate your brand with value.

Then, attend industry conferences.  

While building relationships online is great, industry conferences help you reach potential buyers in real life.

You can talk with industry experts and show them what your brand does. Because they see you, it becomes easier to build stronger relationships with them.

Building a brand can take years, but it will strengthen your marketing efforts, including achieving high search rankings.

Conclusion

If your SaaS blog posts are not ranking, many factors could be behind the problem.

But because search rankings are so important for finding SaaS customers, you can’t rest until you find a solution.

So, start troubleshooting to pinpoint what’s behind your poor search rankings.

If the problem is bad content that neither serves the reader nor your business, I can help with that.

With years of experience writing SaaS content, I understand how to provide information to help readers solve problems while positioning your product as the best solution.

So, reach out.