# Keyword Research for Early-Stage SaaS With Little Domain Authority > How early-stage SaaS companies with a new domain can choose keywords they can realistically rank for, using free tools and customer language. Source: https://comppound.com/blog/keyword-research-for-early-stage-saas-with-little-domain-authority (published 2026-07-02) A new SaaS domain can't win the same keywords as an established competitor, at least not yet. Targeting "project management software" from a site that launched last quarter is a reliable way to publish content that never leaves page five. Keyword research for early stage SaaS is about finding the queries you can win now, with content your buyers will actually find useful. Those early wins build the authority and topical depth that make harder keywords possible later. This guide explains where to find keyword ideas when you have little data, what a winnable keyword looks like, how to prioritize and how to turn research into a monthly habit rather than a one-time spreadsheet. ## Start with your customers, not a tool Before opening any keyword tool, collect the language your customers use. Keyword tools are good at expanding and sizing ideas, but they only know what you type into them. If you start with the phrases your homepage uses, you'll get variations of your own positioning, which may not be how buyers think about the problem at all. The best sources are close to hand. Sales and demo call notes show how prospects describe their problem before they know your terminology. Support tickets show what people are trying to do when they get stuck, which often maps to how-to searches. Onboarding survey answers, especially open-ended ones about why someone signed up, reveal the trigger that sent them looking. And online communities such as Reddit threads, Slack groups and industry forums show buyers asking each other for help in their own words. Write the phrases down verbatim. Don't tidy them into marketing language. You'll often find that customers describe the problem very differently from how your site does. Your homepage might talk about "revenue intelligence," while prospects on calls say they want to "see which deals are about to slip." That gap is a keyword opportunity, because the buyer's phrasing is what they type into a search box. For a small team, this step doesn't need to be elaborate. Spend an hour reading the last twenty call notes and fifty support tickets, and you'll usually have a page of seed phrases that no competitor is targeting deliberately. ## Use Search Console as soon as you have it If your site has been live for even a few weeks, Google Search Console already shows you queries where your pages appear. This is the most underused source of keyword ideas for young sites, because it reflects what Google already associates with you rather than what a tool estimates. Open the performance report and look at queries with impressions but few clicks, where your average position sits somewhere between roughly 8 and 40. These are topics where Google considers your site somewhat relevant but no page answers the query well enough to rank higher. A focused page on each one, or a substantial update to the page that currently ranks, is usually the fastest win available. You're working with Google's existing understanding of your site rather than trying to change it. Be careful not to overreact to tiny numbers. A query with a handful of impressions over a month may be noise. Look for queries that appear consistently over several weeks, or groups of related queries that point to the same topic. ## Expand with free and cheap tools Once you have seed phrases, expand them. Google's own results are a good starting point. Autocomplete suggestions show what people commonly type after your seed phrase. The "People also ask" box shows related questions and the follow-ups buyers have. Related searches at the bottom of the results page suggest adjacent angles you might not have considered. Keyword tools with a free tier give rough estimates of search volume and difficulty. Treat these numbers as directional rather than precise. Volume estimates for niche B2B topics are often unreliable, and difficulty scores are each tool's own model, not a measurement. They're useful for comparing ideas against each other and for spotting the occasional seed phrase that turns out to be far more competitive than expected. ## What a winnable keyword looks like For a new domain, good targets usually share four traits. ### Specific "Onboarding checklist for [B2B SaaS](/blog/what-is-programmatic-seo-a-b2b-saas-guide-to-scaling-organic-traffic)" is a better target than "onboarding." Longer, more specific queries have fewer strong pages competing for them, and the intent is clearer. Someone searching for an onboarding checklist for B2B SaaS knows what they want, which makes it easier to write a page that satisfies them and easier for that page to attract the right visitors. ### Weak current results Search the query yourself and look honestly at page one. If it includes forum posts, thin listicles, outdated articles or pages that only half answer the question, there's room for a better page. If it's full of thorough, recent guides from well-known companies, the keyword may be out of reach for now, however relevant it is. This manual check is more reliable than any difficulty score, because you can see exactly what you'd need to beat. ### Relevant to your product A keyword can be easy to rank for and still useless if the people searching it will never need what you sell. Ask whether a searcher could plausibly become a customer within a year. A product for sales teams might find an easy keyword about general productivity tips, but the traffic would be mostly people who will never buy sales software. Relevance protects you from building an audience that doesn't convert. ### Answerable by you You should be able to write something more useful than what currently ranks, ideally using knowledge your team has from building the product or working with customers. A page that repeats what the top three results already say has little reason to outrank them. A page that adds the specific steps your customers follow, the mistakes your support team sees or the trade-offs your engineers considered has something new to offer. ## Sort keywords by intent Group your list into rough buckets by how much the searcher already knows. Problem-aware queries, such as "how to reduce churn in SaaS," come from people who know they have a problem but aren't looking for a tool yet. They suit educational guides. Solution-aware queries, such as "churn prediction tools," come from people who know a type of solution exists and are exploring options. They suit comparison and category pages. Product-aware queries, such as "[competitor] alternative" or "[your product] vs [competitor]," come from people comparing specific products. They suit alternative and comparison pages. Early-stage sites often get the best return from a mix of two types. Problem-aware long-tail guides build topical depth and earn links over time. Product-aware alternative pages convert well even at low volume, because the searcher is already close to a decision. Solution-aware category terms tend to be the most competitive, so they usually come later. ## Don't ignore zero-volume keywords Many tools show "0" or "10" monthly searches for very specific queries. For niche B2B topics, that number is often inaccurate, because tools rely on data samples that miss low-frequency, high-value searches. If your customers ask a question on sales calls, other buyers are searching for it too. A page that answers a precise question can bring a small number of highly qualified visitors, and in B2B a few of the right visitors can matter more than thousands of the wrong ones. These pages are also usually easy to rank because few competitors bother with them. ## Build clusters, not one-offs Instead of chasing scattered keywords across unrelated topics, choose a few themes close to your product and cover them in depth. If you sell onboarding software, a cluster might include an onboarding checklist, a guide to activation metrics, a piece on empty state design, welcome email examples and a guide to onboarding team accounts. Link these pages to each other and to a main guide that introduces the topic. Clusters help search engines understand what your site is about. A site with ten connected pages on onboarding looks more authoritative on that topic than a site with one onboarding page and nine unrelated posts. They also make each new page easier to rank than the last, since it benefits from the links and relevance the earlier pages have built. And they help readers, who can move from one related question to the next without leaving your site. ## A simple way to prioritize Score each keyword from 1 to 3 on three things: how relevant it is to your product, how beatable the current results are and how well your team can answer it. Add the scores and start with the highest totals. Ignore search volume until relevance and winnability are strong. This approach is deliberately rough. Its value is that it forces you to look at each keyword through the questions that matter for a young site, rather than sorting a spreadsheet by volume and starting at the top. When two keywords tie, volume can break the tie. ## How many keywords to start with A list of 20 to 40 well-chosen keywords is plenty for the first few months. It's better to publish fewer, genuinely useful pages and improve them based on what Search Console shows than to publish a large batch of thin pages that compete with each other and leave a poor impression on readers. A small team publishing one or two strong pages a week will work through that list in a few months, and by then Search Console will be suggesting the next set of opportunities. ## Review monthly Every month, go back to Search Console and look for three things. First, new queries you appear for that aren't on your list, which show where Google is starting to see your site as relevant. Second, pages that have moved onto page two, which may only need an update, a better structure or a few internal links to reach page one. Third, pages with impressions but low click-through rates, which may need a clearer title or meta description that matches what searchers want. Add promising new queries to your list, rescore them alongside the existing ones and adjust your publishing plan. ## The takeaway Keyword research for a young SaaS site is less about tools and more about focus. Start with the language your customers use, use Search Console to see what Google already associates with you, and target specific, relevant queries where the current results are weak and your team has something to add. Build clusters around a few themes, prioritize by relevance and winnability before volume, and repeat the process every month. Those small wins are what eventually earn you the authority to compete for the bigger terms. ## Keep reading - [AI Keyword Research for SaaS: A Practical Step‑by‑Step Guide](/blog/ai-keyword-research-for-saas-a-practical-stepbystep-guide) - [SaaS blog workflow automation for early‑stage growth](/blog/saas-blog-workflow-automation-for-earlystage-growth) ## Frequently asked questions ### Can a new SaaS website rank for competitive keywords? Rarely at first. Start with specific long-tail queries and build topical depth, then target broader terms as the site earns authority and links. ### Should I trust keyword difficulty scores? Use them as a rough guide only. Always check the actual search results to see whether the ranking pages are strong or weak. ### Are zero-volume keywords worth targeting? Often, yes, in B2B. Tools undercount niche queries, and a precise answer can attract highly qualified visitors. ## About Comppound Comppound runs SEO and AI search for B2B SaaS companies: a person sets the plan and reviews samples and every high-risk page, and AI speeds up production. - [See SEO Growth](https://comppound.com/services/seo-growth): Buyers compare before they book a demo. Are your pages there when they do? - [See pricing](https://comppound.com/pricing): Want the content written, reviewed and published for you?