As the world shifts rapidly to a digital model, your business should adapt to survive.
Being a B2B SaaS business, you might have the right solutions for other businesses, but how do you make yourself seen by them? How do you ensure your online traffic turns from visitors to loyal customers?
Let’s put this into perspective.
Did you know B2B buyers engage with three to seven content pieces before talking to a sales representative? And 11% consume over seven content pieces before considering specific solutions. This is where top-of-the-funnel (ToFu) keywords can be a game-changer.
If you are a B2B SaaS founder or marketer, you need the right SEO strategies to fine-tune your online presence. That’s where ToFu keywords help to solidify conversions.
In this ToFu keywords guide we deep dive into TOFU keyword research and strategy. Let’s begin!
What are TOFU keywords?
ToFu keywords are search terms that a potential consumer may use at the beginning of their buyer’s journey. These keywords are meant to drive curiosity and create awareness in the consumer’s mind. They are used to attract a broader audience and are intended to inform and educate.
These keywords are not meant to be transactional. Rather, they help businesses in boosting brand awareness, developing credibility and cultivating leads. How do they do that? By providing valuable content that is aimed at the interests and needs of your potential consumers.
Typically, the conversion rate of ToFu keywords varies depending on the industry and targeting. Usually it is between 1% to 5%, reflecting the initial stage of customer engagement.
ToFu (informational) keywords tend to be short, broad, and hard to rank for. The search intent is mostly unclear since they are at the unaware stage, trying to gather information. Eg, CRM, email marketing etc.
Importance of ToFu keywords for B2B SaaS
Before we get into the core part of this ToFu keywords guide, let’s understand why ToFu keywords are important. ToFu keywords form the foundation of your content strategy.
In the first stage of the marketing funnel, target keywords cast a wide net and drive the most traffic to your site. At this stage, people are not looking to spend money — they simply want information.
By identifying the right keywords, you can make customers aware of your brand/product. In the long run, your ability to inform makes you a credible source that your consumers can trust.
1. Improves search engine ranking
Find questions and problems of your target audience that you can solve. Then, identify keywords that you can use to create useful articles that build credibility. Consistent quality output can help you rank in search engines, since you are more valuable to the users. More traffic = More leads. It could also lead to free backlinks which will benefit your entire site’s SEO efforts.
2. Helps create awareness
ToFu keywords are meant to address broader interests. This helps you attract potential customers who might not even know your brand exists. This not only expands your audience but also establishes your brand presence early in the customer journey.
3. Helps identify the right audience
By creating content on ToFu keywords, you understand your target audience who are in the initial stage of searching for products or services. Targeting and segmentation based on intent can help in focussed content marketing efforts.
4. Building credibility
By creating content around ToFu keywords, you position your business as a credible source in your industry. Target low-hanging keywords with low difficulty. It gets your name, logo, and colors in front of a wider audience. Get in front of their eyes a dozen times and they’ll begin to associate your brand with being the solution they can turn to. Search engines recognize credible content, and this can positively impact your overall search ranking.
By incorporating strategic ToFu keywords into your content, your product can start attracting the right audience, and this will gradually help you build a thriving B2B business. In the next section of this ToFu keywords guide, you’ll learn how to find ToFu keywords.
TOFU keywords guide to finding keywords
Finding the right ToFu keywords is not going to be easy, but certain tools on the internet have definitely made the job a tad bit easier. We tell you how to find these keywords in this section of our ToFu keywords guide:
Use keywords search tools
1. Answer the Public
With this keyword tool, you can plug in your product type (like shoes, clothes or electronics) or the niche (like golf and swimming) and use a keyword modifier with it.
How to use Answer the Public?
- Input the topics or keywords that are either relevant to your product or relevant to the problems your target businesses face. For example, your product is a cloud-based accounting software. So your target consumers might search for “Cloud-based accounting”.
- Enter your region and language.
- Hit search. This tool will generate a list of questions that people are asking related to your keyword.
- Explore the questions with the different types, such as “how,” “what,” “why,” and “can.”
- This can help you identify the right ToFu keywords to create content on.
2. Keyword Surfer
A 100% free Chrome Extension developed by Surfer SEO, Keyword Surfer helps identify search volume, CPC and competitors’ ranking for the keyword. It is able to:
- Inform about the monthly searches and the CPC of a keyword.
- Generates a list of related and keyword variations for a keyword.
- Checks and displays the word counts of all the ranking articles.
How to use Keyword Surfer?
- Make a list of seed keywords for your niche. Try niching it down as much as you can.
- Open Chrome and type in your seed keyword. Add question words like why, how, can, do etc. in front of it and Google will suggest keywords. For eg – you could take email automation.
- Google will automatically show a number of long tail keywords.
- Pick one and search on Keyword Surfer to see the SV and CPC. The variations and related keyword ideas will be shown on the right. Along with this you will be able to see the word count and keyword in content below the ranking site’s title.
Cluster keywords
Create a content silo and interlink MoFu and BoFu keywords. It helps boost rankings.
For example, you can try ranking on the ToFu keyword for email automation; and also simultaneously try to rank on MoFu keyword – top 5 email automation systems for a B2B SaaS company in the USA and rank on BoFu keyword – Mailchimp pricing.
With descriptive anchor text and internal links, it helps to build brand trust and credibility.
Keyword clustering tools like keywordinsights.ai can help classify keywords to make perfect topic lists.
How to use TOFU keywords?
As a business owner, knowing how to use different content formats to accommodate your top-of-funnel keywords strategy can help bring the right traffic to your brand. That’s what this section of our ToFu keywords guide will tell you:
1. Blog posts
With blogs, you can address industry trends, the pain points of your target audience, and informative topics that might be relevant to your niche. Providing such information can guide your potential audience towards your brand in search of answers to their pressing questions.
2. Infographics
Your audience may also be searching for a simple explanation of complicated concepts. Infographics can visually depict data, statistics, or complex concepts related to your target audience’s challenges. Providing creative infographics can increase your brand’s credibility within your niche.
3. Videos
Consider videos an extension of the infographics mentioned above. By creating educational or explainer videos addressing specific industry problems and potential solutions (without plugging in your product), you can once again establish yourself as a reliable and credible source amongst your target consumers.
4. Social media posts
Spark a conversation with your audience. Social media is the best and most engaging way to build a community of people who value your voice and reach. Make posts that prompt your community to engage in conversations with your brand. This can give you insights and help discover new angles and avenues for pushing or perfecting your product in the long run.
5. Ebooks and white papers
Ebooks and whitepapers offer in-depth guides, research reports, or case studies addressing industry challenges and potential solutions. Give your audience relevant knowledge in exchange for contact information!
Explore ebooks by Contensify.
6. Podcasts
Get your brand in the same room as industry experts! That is what podcasts and interviews allow you to do. Conversation with experts will enable you to discuss, interview, and gain relevant industry insights into your product’s niche. It also creates a platform that serves as a vault of detailed insights they cannot find anywhere else.
7. Interactive tools and calculators
This solution is highly effective if you are a finance B2B Saas provider. Create quick tools that provide intuitive samples of what your fully functional solution can do easily. It gives the consumer a functional tool that they can use to find quick answers to their problems. These could be tax calculators, pension calculators, AI detectors, plagiarism checkers, etc.
Your brand can use these practical tools to drive foot traffic to your online presence. Embedding ToFu keywords into different formats can ensure higher potential customers knocking on your digital doors.
Tools to use to find TOFU keywords
Here are a few tools you can use to find top of the funnel keywords when creating B2B SaaS content marketing and SEO strategies:
1. Semrush
Semrush has a suite of high-powered tools that can help make your brand visible consistently. It has a vast database of keywords related to your niche and topical trends. Plus it helps to analyze your competitor’s top-ranking keywords to understand their strategy and find potential gaps you can exploit. Most importantly it helps you forecast and gauge potential ROI on specific keywords
2. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool that helps in link building, competitor analysis, rank tracking, keyword research, and site audits. Designed for marketing professionals, it helps get higher Google rankings. David Stein, VP of Content and SEO, Wunderman Thompson says that ‘From the basics like rank tracking to the pro-level backlink insights Ahrefs allows us to be more efficient and more effective SEOs’
3. Moz
Moz was founded in 2004. Initially started off as a company for informational SEO content, currently, their main service offerings are their SEO tools. With free & paid tools; Moz Pro is the best on the platform. It is an all-in-one SEO suite that can help your business perform a variety of tasks to improve your overall SEO strategy including website rank tracking, Site SEO auditing, keyword research, Audience analysis, competitor tracking and more.
Ready to use this ToFu keyword guide for your B2B SaaS brand?
If you are running a B2B SaaS company, there is no escaping ToFu keywords and content to be able to target potential customers in the first stage of their journey.
In order to rank on search engines and eventually in the minds of people, consider investing in agencies that can handle such services end to end.
Contensify provides all-round content marketing solutions to startups, VC firms, agencies and enterprise companies, including ToFu strategies. We create educational, actionable, SEO-friendly content – articles, ebooks, guides, case studies, infographics and more that your customers will love you for!
