EPISODE SUMMARY
In this week’s episode of Scale Your SaaS, we sat down with Sam Dunning, who has carved an impressive path in the world of SEO and digital marketing. His story is as inspiring as it is instructive. From his early days in retail to founding his agency, Breaking B2B, Sam’s journey is a testament to the power of perseverance and the importance of aligning marketing with sales.
With host and B2B SaaS sales coach Matt Wolach, we’ll delve into the key takeaways from Sam’s experience, shedding light on effective SEO strategies for B2B tech companies. Read this blog to learn more.
PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE
Podcast: Scale Your SaaS with Matt Wolach
Episode: Episode No. 324, “Why Your SEO Isn’t Working – with Sam Dunning”
Guest: Sam Dunning, Founder and Host at Breaking B2B
Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS Sales Coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor
Sponsored by: Leadfeeder
TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE
Common Mistakes in SEO
One of the most significant insights Sam shared is the common mistakes software companies make with SEO. Many companies treat SEO as a checkbox activity, delegating it to overburdened marketing teams who do a cursory job of it. This often involves writing a blog post based on a keyword and then forgetting about it. The result? Traffic that doesn’t convert into leads.
Aligning SEO with Your Software Sales Intent
Sam emphasizes the importance of focusing on high-intent keywords that target prospects ready to engage in a sales conversation. Instead of just generating traffic, the goal should be to drive leads that convert. For instance, targeting keywords like “best calendar scheduling software” or “Calendly alternatives” ensures that the content attracts visitors who are already in the decision-making phase.
Creating Best-in-Class Content
When it comes to content creation, Sam advises understanding the search intent behind keywords. This means analyzing the top results for a keyword and aiming to create content that not only matches but exceeds what’s currently available. For example, if the top result is a listicle of “top 10 alternatives,” aim to create a “top 20” listicle with comprehensive, well-researched content.
The Advantage of Smaller SaaS Companies
One of the advantages smaller SaaS companies have over their larger counterparts is agility. While large companies often face significant red tape in content creation, smaller companies can publish at scale and improve over time. This ability to quickly create and iterate on content provides a substantial edge in the competitive landscape of SEO.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
From Retail to Digital Marketing
Sam’s career began in a small camera store in the UK, where he quickly realized that retail wasn’t his calling. After enduring a year of dissatisfied customers, he transitioned to a website agency, thanks to a job opportunity that arose through his cousin. This move marked the beginning of Sam’s deep dive into website design and SEO.
The Early Days: Learning by Doing
Entering the digital marketing sphere through a startup, Sam was thrown into the deep end. He wore multiple hats, from selling websites to project managing and eventually diving into SEO and digital marketing strategies. This hands-on experience proved invaluable, providing Sam with a holistic understanding of how different elements of digital marketing work together.
Founding Breaking B2B
Fast-forward to 2024, and Sam founded Breaking B2B with a clear mission: to focus on generating qualified leads rather than just driving traffic. After years of witnessing SEO agencies prioritize vanity metrics over meaningful results, Sam decided to take a different approach. Breaking B2B emphasizes understanding businesses, their ideal customer profiles (ICP), and their specific needs to develop tailored strategies that drive a steady flow of qualified pipelines.
Conclusion: Start Now, Iterate Later
For early-stage software leaders, the key takeaway is to start implementing SEO strategies now. Identify your high-intent keywords, create content that addresses these queries comprehensively, and publish at scale. By doing so, you can start building a robust SEO foundation that drives meaningful results over time.
Sam’s journey from retail to SEO expertise is a powerful reminder that success in digital marketing requires a deep understanding of your audience, a focus on high-quality content, and the agility to outmaneuver larger competitors. By following these principles, B2B SaaS companies can develop effective SEO strategies that drive sustained growth and success.
TOP QUOTES
Sam Dunning
[01:20] “In my opinion, kind of getting thrown in at the deep end of a startup is one of the best things you can do for hands-on experience.”
[12:15] “SEO often gets overcomplicated. For many SaaS websites that want to drive a steady stream of demos or sales calls, it doesn’t have to be.”
[19:06] “The advantage that a lot of smaller SaaS companies have is that the giants within their niche have so much red tape.”
Matt Wolach
[08:19] “It really is kind of a misalignment with marketing and sales and with your SEO people, and also from leadership not giving the right direction of exactly what needs to happen.”
[19:39] “Same thing if you’re thinking on the development side for the product too, by the way, it takes forever to spit out product when you’re big.”
LEARN MORE
To learn more about Breaking B2B, visit: https://www.breakingb2b.com/
You can also find Sam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samdunning/
For more about how Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com.
Head over to leadfeeder.com and sign up for a 14-day (no strings attached) free trial: https://www.leadfeeder.com/
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Check out the whole episode transcript here:
Matt Wolach 00:00
Hello and welcome to Scale Your SaaS. My name is Matt Wolach. My job is to help you scale your SaaS, just like the show is called, and we do that through making sure you know how to generate a whole bunch of great leads, making sure you know how to close those leads and how to build a team around yourself to be able to do it for you. So that’s what I do, I help people do that. People come to me so I can coach them on those things but I also want to put experts in front of you and line people up who are innovators and creators in the B2B world so that they can help you know exactly how to do this. And today, we have an amazing expert with us, I am so excited, We’ve got Sam Dunning with us. Sam, How’re you doing?
Sam Dunning 00:00
Hey Matt, thanks for having me on man. Looking forward to the chat.
Matt Wolach 00:00
Likewise, I am as well. And Sam is awesome so let me make sure you all know who he is. So Sam he’s the Founder and Host at Breaking B2B, an awesome deal he’s doing there. I’m going to tell you more about it but he also runs a podcast called Breaking B2B. So absolutely check that out. What he’s doing is he’s helping B2B companies scale leads and revenue using SEO strategies, these things drive results. And Sam, he is an expert at digital marketing. So I’m really excited about how he’s going to help us understand how to generate a bunch of great leads. So Sam, thanks for coming on the show.
Sam Dunning 00:20
Yeah, thanks, Matt. Looking forward to digging in, and hopefully showing some insights, ideas and unusual strategies.
Matt Wolach 00:27
I love it. I love it. I can’t wait. So tell me what have you been up to lately? And what’s coming up?
Sam Dunning 00:32
Yeah, yeah, sounds good. So I actually I’ve been in the summer since I’ve been in the website SEO organic search game for probably more than I care to remember that it’s pretty much my second job after coming out of the retail game. So originally, in the UK, I was selling camera equipment and media equipment in a little store called Jessops. And I soon realized that I hated working with the general public. And like the short story long or the long story short, rather, is that after a year or so, of kind of selling cameras, selling equipment, having the general public yell at me for asking how they were and if I could help, and getting sick of that a job came up for a website agency. And that’s how I got into the world because my cousin was involved in it as well as another friend, learnt the wonderful world of building designing websites from the ground up. And in my opinion, kind of getting thrown in at the deep end of the startup of a startup is one of the best things you can do for hands on experience. And literally like jumping into boiling water. And probably a bit like yourself, I’d imagine I started with with a sales background. So I kind of got into a bit of a jack of all trades role like selling website, project managing them, eventually getting into SEO and other digital marketing strategies and kind of learning right at the deep end working with the team kind of asking questions about what’s what started building my own stuff, and learning the hard way. And kind of fast forward to today. So 2024, I set up my own agency start of this year so breaking b2b. And essentially, we, after working agency side for many, many years, got kind of tired of the classic SEO agency that promises you loads of traffic and basically tries to deliver on fluffy metrics. So we’ll say like your top 20 keywords, and you’re getting tons and tons of traffic, but then the founder or the marketing leader on the back end is like that, all looks good on paper, and the graphs look awesome. But there’s not really many qualified demos, or many qualified sales crews coming off the back of it. So we very much took the opposite approach. And we kind of take the time to understand how businesses work, what their ICP actually is what they want from the strategy. And as you know, Matt, like the most one of the most important things as a SaaS or a tech founder is that your company is driving a steady flow of qualified pipeline, rather than just random leads or a ton of traffic, because it doesn’t really make an impact.
Matt Wolach 03:01
Absolutely, that’s so frustrating when you’re like, Oh, we’re generating leads, but none of the leads are quality, none of them fit the ICP, it’s just very frustrating. So I love it when marketing is aligned with sales and marketing has a key understanding of what the ICP is and who we should be going after, and what are the best leads, and they’re feeding sales, the best types of opportunities. I love that you are so aligned with that, Sam.
Sam Dunning 03:25
Yeah, exactly, I think. Because I’ve got that selling background. So I started as a seller and then went into marketing and kind of learn, I guess you could almost say the hard way because I was getting fed these terrible leads these terrible marketing qualified leads and working with them. And I soon realized what the difference was between a good call and a terrible one and I thought, well, if we’re going to start generating leads for our own business, and then eventually moving on to serving clients, we better make sure that they’re actually worth their time. And yeah, when when you like to say when you’re a founder selling, you soon learn what makes a good lead and a terrible one.
Matt Wolach 04:02
Yeah, no doubt. That’s absolutely true. So tell me, how did you start Breaking B2B? Where did that all come from?
Sam Dunning 04:08
Yeah, so I was another I was actually a third share of another web and SEO agency for a good three or four years. And eventually, because that we were there was three of us that ran that business and eventually wanted to break off. We weren’t that niche. So we tended to serve almost anyone and then anyone that needed a website or SEO strategy. And then after running my own podcast, which this year also renamed to breaking b2b, where we basically interview b2b tech marketing leaders, and they share their growth strategies, what’s driving leads and revenue, and also do solo episodes. Again, around b2b Seo b2b website tips with unusual ideas. I kind of niche down after a while into b2b Tech and service companies and thought I’ve been doing this a long time. I enjoy the most working with b2b teams because they tend to have a marketing team that understands the value of making your website, your best sales rep. They understand the value of organic search that when it’s done right, that it can be a qualified sustainable demo or lead driver. So I thought probably makes sense to niche down and do my own thing with that leverage the podcast, interview marketing leaders, and also offer this as a service to those b2b tech teams. So yeah, pretty much the start of this year kicked off. And we’ve just been steadily growing since.
Matt Wolach 05:29
I love it. I love it. What are you seeing as your as you’re working with your clients? What are you seeing are some of the biggest mistakes that they’ve made trying to figure all this out on their own?
Sam Dunning 05:39
loads, loads, so I suppose I’ll look at it from a from an SEO and website lens is that’s my niche and my focus and feel free to drill down and what you see fit. So one of the biggest mistakes I see with tech companies, SaaS companies on the SEO front, is that they there’s a few but I’ll start with a couple of the common culprits is they see SEO is a tick box activity. So what quite often happens, Matt is that, let’s say the marketing or the founder, or one of the execs at the team will say, Well, I’m starting to get annoyed because I’m constantly seeing every time I search for our offer, or search for our service, or I search directly for what we do, or the problem we fix, constantly see competitors showing up above us in organic search results on Google, we need to start addressing that. So then they’ll go to whoever looks after the marketing, maybe they’ve got a team of marketing of one, or maybe they’ve got just someone who does a bit of marketing within the team. And they say to this exact look, we’re falling behind on SEO, can you do some SEO? And then this marketing person on the team is like, Sure, I can do some SEO, I have got 99 other jobs to do this week, I’ll do a bit of SEO for you. When I’ve got time they say great. So what they do is they they log on to a classic SEO tool like maybe Ahrefs or SEM rush or something similar. They go, Okay, I’m gonna do some SEO, I look up a keyword that’s relevant to what we do. They write a blog posts on it because they find a keyword that’s relatively low difficulty that’s going to generate a bit of traffic. They write a blog post, maybe because they’re so busy, they run the blog post idea through chatGPT publish it on the website, job done, forget about it go back to their other 99 tasks for the week, a few months later, but some time passes. And then the the leadership team, the founder says, oh, did you manage to do some SEO? And they say, Yeah, I did some SEO, I wrote an article, it got us a little bit of traffic. And then the leadership might say, okay, cool, did it get any leads? And they’ll say, No, you didn’t ask me to get any leads, you just said quote, unquote, do some SEO, I did some SEO. And that’s where it all goes wrong, right? It’s just seen as this checkbox activity, check out a couple articles, and hope for the best. Whereas, of course, the best SEO strategies are built by knowing what your focus clients are actually searching for. When they have high intent for your offering your SaaS solution, your technology, or maybe they’re comparing you to alternatives or looking for the best in your sector. And we can drill into that if you wish. But it’s yeah, it’s just so often seen as a tick box activity. And that’s why it doesn’t drive pipeline leads.
Matt Wolach 08:19
Yeah, it’s so smart. I totally agree. I’ve seen that happen a lot. And it’s, it really is kind of a misalignment, like I said, with marketing and sales and with your SEO people, and also from leadership not giving the right direction of exactly what needs to happen. But you’re right. I think that, you know, I’ve heard I’m not an SEO expert, but I’ve heard SEO experts like yourself, talk about aiming at the right segment of the of the target. And you just talked about high intent, people, people who are searching with a feel of like they need to have a solution. So can you talk more about that? And then how that all works?
Sam Dunning 08:56
Yeah, sure thing. So you’re exactly right. So where many SaaS tech companies get SEO wrong is that they start from the wrong wrong lens, really. So they’re looking at SEO, and then maybe using tools bit SEMrush Ahrefs, or what else. But they’re trying to focus on getting as much traffic to their site as possible. And that often means you’re looking at what’s called top of the funnel SEO. And that’s usually things like, questions queries. So let’s let’s pretend you’re in the calendar scheduling space, which is one often used in the SaaS space, it might be like, I don’t know how to build, how to build scheduling software, or how to set up a scheduler on my website or those kind of query based searches, which how to searches or best ways to do searches or those kinds of questions. Searches often yield a lot of traffic. But they’re usually what we call informative searches, which are going to bring up a blog article. And at best if someone is searching how to search or similar. They’re going to fly on to your article, maybe skim the information they need. At very best, they might sign up for a lead magnet or check out your podcast. If the blog article was designed in an engaging way, and makes it easy for you to do such at worst, they’ll skim the article fly off get about their day. Whereas kind of what we call revenue focused SEO takes an opposite approach. It thinks what is my target customer searching for exactly when they are ready to have a sales conversation now. And if we flight back to, let’s say, calendar scheduling in the SaaS space, they might search for something like I know best calendar scheduling software, or they might a really good one in the SaaS space is comparing you to alternatives. So kind of scheduling that might be Calendly alternatives, or chili Piper alternatives or revenue hero alternatives. In that case there, they already know some of the solutions about but they want to make sure as you know, usually when it comes to evaluating a tech vendor, you evaluate three or four options. So that person is already aware that they need a solution, but they’re comparing their options. So looking for alternatives, that’s a really good way to scoop up demos. Another one is industry or niche focused. I can discuss scheduling software for sales teams, calendar scheduling software for HR teams, or recruitment teams, or whatever the niche, the money niches that you focus on. So those are some really good kind of key strategies. Basically understanding exactly what your prospects are searching for when they want to have a sales conversation or the niches that they’re going to search within are your money niches, the ones you serve well have the problem you fix and have money to invest in you offer or the common alternatives that folks might compare you against. Those are a good place to start.
Matt Wolach 11:44
I love it. It’s so great seeing a smart mind dive into some of this stuff. And you’re very clear that you’re experienced on this. And and I love hearing your insights on how all this works. What I want to figure out is you know, some people think SEO is whatever you do on the on the page, and then we know there’s off page, because so can you talk about like, what’s more important? Are they both important? Like how does a company manage all that?
Sam Dunning 12:13
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And there’s so many myths and SEO often gets overcomplicated. And for many SaaS websites, I tech sites that want to drive a steady stream of demos, or sales calls. SEO often gets overcomplicated. So so called specialists would go in and say you need to spend months on auditing your website. You need to do all this technical stuff, you need to do all this off page stuff, you need to build tons of links. And truth is really in most cases you don’t. The common issues with SaaS websites we see as they’re super thin on content, especially if they’re startup or early stage like they might even only have five pages like home, what we do who we serve, pricing results book a demo, something like that. And that’s one of the common culprits. They’re just too thin on content. And the probably the content is there hasn’t been well optimized. So my main kind of almost a step by step, if you will, is identify your money keywords, like we just talked about. They’re the main offers you want to, you want to actually get leads for the main niches you serve. What are your common alternatives, and other other terms that someone might search for around your offer like best calendar, scheduling software, or whatever is relevant to your niche, run those kind of keywords through a to be ahref SEMrush, make sure you’re going after what ones that have got a little bit of volume aren’t too competitive. Once you’ve made that list, then you want it to actually rank on your site. So this is where you actually need to create content. But the best way to do that is you need to measure you need to do something what’s called measuring the intent or identifying the intent of the keyword. So let’s say let’s say we want it to be our competitors. Let’s say we were going for chili Piper alternatives, because we’re kind of calendar scheduling. What I do is I’d literally Google that keyword, I’d see in the organic results, what are the top three organic non paid results, and usually for compared to alternative keywords, it’s a listicle. And what I’d be my back is it’s an article with, for example, top 10 Chili Piper alternatives and the way that you can usually the way those articles are structured as they’ll have a bit of an intro. And then you’ll usually position your own author as number one. And the best way to do that is to actually not just talk about how great you are, but talk about your points of differentiation. What you do that the competitors don’t, maybe you have a table that says this is us. This is our common competitors. Then maybe have some screenshots of your product, and then maybe customer reviews and then a call to action to book a demo or free signup. And then you have your other nine or 10 competitors below with a fair summary assessment. You don’t slate them you Don’t diss them because you do I want to get a legal suite on your ass. So it’s just sensible fair play. But what I’ve advised as if you’re doing that, and you’re building some of those pages as you look to blow those pages out of the water, so if the current organic number one is top 10 alternatives, I try and double it. So I’d go for top 20 alternatives, and make my article literally best in class by all means possible. So that’s called measuring the search intent, understanding what kind of page Google spits out. But for example, if we took another type of keyword, so instead of doing alternative, if we went for, let’s say, best calendar scheduling software, it might be that that brings up a landing page opposed to an article or a listicle. So in that case, we’d look at what’s ranking Well. it might be that a competitor, like proposal five probably ranks well, it’s another one panda doc, they’re probably out there. So we’d look at how they’ve structured their landing page. And what I usually recommend is you take notes on any gaps on their page and how you can one up it. So it could be that you add, it could be that those competitors have got a lot of text, maybe they talk about the value prop at the start, maybe then they have some use cases, maybe they have some results. And then maybe they’ve got a summary at the bottom of the landing page. So I’d think, Okay, I’m gonna, at the top of the page, I’m going to embed a YouTube video, that’s how to on this specific topic, as quite often if you embed YouTube videos that can boost the SEO, from my experience. And in your result, on the Google page on the Google listing search engine result page, you can sometimes get an image of your video, which is a little hack for improving your click through rate. And then I’d look for gaps. So this Google have got this framework that they rolled out a while ago with a helpful content update called EEAT stands for experience expertise or authority trust. So they want to see that whoever’s putting together your content on page has hands on expertise on a subject matter. And where so many folks are getting SEO and content wrong as they’re just spitting out copy from AI, and maybe making a few tweaks. But as you’ve probably noticed that if some AI content, if you read it, you almost instantly know it’s written by a bot because it says stuff like supercharge your revenues with our All In One tech wizardry to drive revenue like never before. It’s like if I land on a page and read that nonsense, I’m bouncing within two seconds. Okay, so yeah, a dark art of SEO or a secret of SEO is actually leveraging customer insights. So if you can bring up one landing pages, things like common problems they bring to your sales teams, common frustrations, they have common jobs they want to get done and leverage that content. That’s that’s super powerful. Of course, using examples your product and use cases, video run throughs demo examples, etc. But also, leveraging FAQs. FAQs are really powerful, especially on landing pages. So if you can leverage not just any, but actual ones that you get on the topic. So if you’re writing a landing page about the best proposal software, then how much does it cost? Do I get an account manager? What’s your refund policy? How long does it take to set up? Why should I use you over your common competitors like these? These are common questions you’re getting on a sales call straight away, leverage them. Most tech companies are way too scared to share these things. Most tech companies are scared to share pricing, let alone answer stuff from sales calls. And if you can do that, not only does it help you from an SEO perspective, it shows transparency, it speeds up sales cycles, and it’s actually an asset that your sales team can link out and emails. So those are a few things. I mean, there is technical things we could talk about, like making sure your URL has the main keyword in your meta title and description has the main keyword and etc. But those are just tactical things that you can do from a simple level to make sure your page is best in class and has a prime position to rank before you consider off page SEO like building links and citations.
Matt Wolach 18:44
love it love it. This is gold here. Sam, I’m really grateful that you’re sharing this with us. What I want to do as we kind of wrap up here is how can we summarize what if you’re if you’re an early stage software leader, and you’re like, Okay, well, I realized that SEO is important. What should they start doing now so that they can start making this happen and start getting some results from SEO?
Sam Dunning 19:06
Yeah, it’s a good question. So the advantage that a lot of smaller SaaS companies have is that the Giants within their niche or within their sector have so much red tape. So the giant the giant SaaS companies like just to publish one page man has to go through various levels of leadership get sign off. So you could be looking at from ideation of kind of one landing page, one article, a month, even longer just to get one page signed off the copy. And then then it’s gonna go to their web design team, then to their dev team, and then it’s eventually published.
Matt Wolach 19:39
Same thing if you’re thinking on the development side for the product, too, by the way, it takes forever to spit out product when you’re big.
Sam Dunning 19:45
Exactly. So if you’re not that big, you have an insane advantage because you can. My recommendation for anyone is to publish at scale. So if you can identify what you talked about those money keywords, if you can really exhaust every single niche that you serve. Every single alternative search everything that’s going to drive those high intent prospects that are ready to have a sales conversation through an SEO lens, and then build out a page for each one of those use cases be an article page, depending on the intent or product page or solution, page, whatever’s relevant. And if you can start publishing them at scale, even if they don’t rank well, instantly, you’ve got them online, Google’s gonna start calling them and you can improve them over time. Meanwhile, your competitors are publishing one or two pages a month, were begging leadership to get them get them signed off. So that is like a super advantage that SaaS companies have over their big monsters.
Matt Wolach 20:36
I love it. A very big advantage. And this has been really incredible stuff that you shared with us here, Sam, really appreciate it’s clear that you are an expert in this space. How can our audience learn more about you and connect with you if they’re looking to get help with their SEO?
Sam Dunning 20:49
Yeah, appreciate it, man. So there’s three main ways. The first is to follow me on LinkedIn Sam Dunning. I share tips and ideas, case studies examples on SEO and b2b websites most days. Second is to check out the podcast Breaking B2B. So we have interviews with b2b tech marketing leaders, they share their growth strategies. And I run solo episodes on SEO and b2b marketing. Or the third is, if you’re maybe frustrated, that your competitors are constantly ahead of you on organic search results on Google and you’re not driving a steady flow of demos or leads and you can book a call on breakingb2b.com
Matt Wolach 21:23
Awesome. Okay, we’ll put all that into the show notes. So if you’re listening, go grab that. And that way you can connect with Sam and potentially chat with him and see how he can help. Sam, this has been amazing. Thanks so much for coming in and sharing all this with us.
Sam Dunning 21:35
Thanks, man. Appreciate it.
Matt Wolach 21:37
Absolutely. Everybody out there, thank you as well. By the way, if this was helpful, make sure you are subcribed to the show. You do not want to miss out on any other amazing experts like Sam. You can tell the amount of insights he just shared. Lot’s of people do that every week here on the show. So thank you for coming, thank you for listening. We will see you next time. Take care.
