I see so many B2B SaaS companies going after BOFU keywords, and their entire strategy is: copy the SERP and add some product mentions. And this gets my blood boiling every time.
If an important BOFU keyword matters commercially but your brand isn’t ranking for it, simply writing a post targeting it won’t work.
First, you need to diagnose why your brand isn’t winning that query, then decide whether the fix is a new page, a better existing page, stronger authority/internal linking, or stronger product/evidence alignment.
Here’s the exact framework I use:
Make sure the keyword is worth targeting
Don’t let keyword data dictate what matters. Start with the buyer and the business, then use search data to validate the opportunity.
I weigh four signals:
- Buyer relevance: Is this a real problem/question for our ICP?
- Search demand: Is there evidence people actively look for it?
- Product right to win: Can our product genuinely solve the problem, and do we have a meaningful advantage over what’s already out there?
- Ability to win: Given the current SERP, our authority, our existing content, and the strength of the competitors already ranking, do we have a credible path to becoming visible?
Even if one of these is missing, your content is less likely to drive meaningful results.
For example, you can have a highly relevant BOFU keyword with strong search demand and a genuinely differentiated product, but still face a huge authority gap.
I’m not saying don’t pursue it; I’m saying that shouldn’t be your entire strategy.
By prioritizing volume/KD, you’ll only optimize for rankings. When you actually need your buyers to understand what you do and move them closer to buying.
So, if the keyword is important to the business, assess how you can compete.
Also, if the investment required to win is wildly disproportionate to the commercial value, leave it for now.
See what the SERP says
Ahrefs recommends analyzing the dominant content type, format, and angle already winning the query. And I couldn’t agree more.
If you want to rank for: “best LinkedIn automation for agencies” and Google is showing:
- comparison/list pages
- 8–15 tools
- pricing/features
- agency-specific evaluation criteria
- firsthand testing
…then creating “The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn Automation for Agencies” is the wrong asset.
Likewise, if “LinkedIn automation for agencies” produces mostly product/category landing pages, the solution may be a commercial landing page, not a blog article.
So your first question should be: What page does Google want for this query?
You need to understand the intent, format, evidence, and level of commercial depth the current SERP is satisfying.
“Always” check your existing content before creating more
Your job is to choose the highest-leverage intervention, not assume more content is the answer. So before deciding what to do, check whether the opportunity already exists somewhere on your site.
I use these rules:
- No relevant page exists → create.
- Relevant page exists and ranks 5–20 → upgrade/rewrite first.
- Relevant page exists and ranks 21–49 → upgrade first too, but weigh it against the authority gap. (May be the real problem is backlinks/site authority.)
- Relevant page exists but ranks 50+ or nowhere → diagnose intent, quality, authority, cannibalization, and indexing before deciding what to do.
For BOFU, build around the buying decision
This is where a lot of SaaS SEO falls apart. BOFU is about people evaluating and comparing options; comparisons, reviews, and “vs” queries.
So everything from pricing, scalability, implementation, operational risk, integrations, account structure, or other questions/use cases matters. All of it helps people decide whether a product is actually viable for them (or not). Your goal is to help them make better/faster buying decisions.
So for example, if a brand isn’t ranking for: “best LinkedIn automation for agencies”
I wouldn’t brief: “Write a 3,000-word SEO listicle with 12 tools.”
I’d ask: What decisions is an agency actually trying to make here? Use your sales calls and customer complaints or requests for spot-on queries/keywords.
Probably things like:
- Can I manage 20 clients without logging into 20 dashboards?
- How are senders allocated?
- Can I separate client data?
- What happens as account count grows?
Then build the content around these questions and use cases.
Use your product to differentiate your content
This is where my favorite lever, “product-led content,” comes in. Use it to speak to your specific ICP and “show” how your product solves their actual problem.
I’d recommend creating content from first-party research, proprietary data, SME input, and customer language queries. They’re gold. Because competitors can reproduce generic SERP-derived content, but they cannot reproduce what you uniquely know and can do.
So instead of: Best LinkedIn Automation Tools for Agencies, I’d create: Best LinkedIn Automation Tools for Agencies: Compared by Client Capacity, Sender Management & Cost at Scale
Then actually model:
| Tool | 5 clients | 20 clients | 50 clients | Shared inbox | Sender pooling | Client workspace | Whitelabel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — filled in per tool, based on real testing — | |||||||
Now there’s an evaluation asset embedded in the article specific to your product. It’s much harder to commoditize.
And this in no way means your product-led should be biased, because I see companies make this mistake ALL THE TIME.
When you’re comparing products, show your methodology, make the criteria explicit, use evidence wherever possible but be honest about where competitors are stronger.
I’m yet to see this in most B2B SaaS BOFU. Too often the instruction is “don’t recommend competitors,” or competitors are included only to be presented in a somewhat bad light.
The point is to make your expertise useful to your buyer, not turn every comparison into a disguised product pitch because people (and LLMs) can see right through that.
Another point I want to focus on here is: make product superiority legible.
You can have the better product and still lose the search.
A feature only becomes commercially meaningful when you explain which problem it solves, why that problem matters to the buyer, and what evidence shows that the capability actually delivers the outcome.
So for an important BOFU query, ask: Does the product already have a meaningful advantage for the job this buyer is trying to do?
If yes, your content should translate that superiority into the buying criteria behind the query.
Suppose a brand has all the right features…but the ranking page barely explains why these matter to an agency operating 40 client accounts.
Then simply adding keywords won’t fix the commercial weakness.
You need: Pain → buying criterion → product capability → evidence.
Not: Keyword → feature list → CTA.
Create supporting content for buyers first, authority second
Don’t reverse-engineer supporting content from the links you want to build. Please!
Many teams create random TOFU content just to link to a money page. I, myself, have been handed a few jobs where we only created a few pages so a money page could have some backlinks.
That’s just money down the SaaS drain. B2B buyer journey isn’t linear anyway. People aren’t going from TOFU article → internal link → BOFU page → demo, as much as I would like this to be the case.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t create TOFU content at all. I’m saying supporting content should come from real problems and searches the same buyer encounters while researching the broader problem.
So for an important BOFU territory like “LinkedIn automation for agencies,” I might build supporting content around:
- managing multiple LinkedIn accounts
- LinkedIn sender limits
- client workspace architecture
- scaling campaigns across multiple senders
- LinkedIn outreach QA
- managing LinkedIn outreach clients
Each page has a reason to exist for the buyer on its own. Together, they also strengthen the site’s topical relevance and create natural internal-link relationships with the commercial page.
And don’t get me wrong: Internal links are super useful. But they should be a byproduct of building a useful information architecture for the buyer, not added just for the sake of it.
Start with: What does our ICP search for and struggle with before they’re ready to make this buying decision, and where should our brand be present?
Then build your internal-link architecture around that.
Look beyond a single keyword/page
Treat an important BOFU query as evidence of a larger commercial territory, i.e., related problems, questions, comparisons, and use cases buyers research around that buying decision. Then decide how much of that territory your brand actually deserves to own.
Winning one keyword or one prompt isn’t enough. Buyers ask a series of related questions, and brands need to appear consistently across the commercially relevant topic.
So define the commercial territory where your brand has a legit right to compete.
Don’t pull 20 topics from a keyword tool. Build outward from evidence: what buyers ask, what customers struggle with, where competitors are winning, and where your product can contribute.
Identify topics and clusters where competitors are winning, and you’re absent. Then build coverage across the buyer journey. But anchor that coverage in competitive relevance and your buyer’s journey.
These are the questions to ask:
- Does our ICP actually encounter this problem, and is there real evidence behind it (search vol., sales calls, customer language, etc)?
- Does our product have a legitimate reason to participate in this conversation, and something differentiated to say?
- Is the topic close enough to our product/category that covering it strengthens rather than dilutes our positioning?
If the answer is no, don’t create anything. If yes, decide what format it needs first: a standalone page, a section on the core page, or an FAQ block.
So say your brand wants to own: “LinkedIn automation for agencies”. I wouldn’t treat it as one keyword. I’d treat LinkedIn automation for agencies as a territory.
Potential pages could include:
Core commercial:
- LinkedIn automation for agencies
Evaluation:
- Best LinkedIn automation tools for agencies
- HeyReach vs Expandi for agencies
- HeyReach vs Skylead
- White-label LinkedIn automation tools
Buying problems:
- Managing multiple LinkedIn accounts
- Managing LinkedIn outreach clients
- LinkedIn agency sender management
Operational questions:
- How many senders does an agency need?
- How do agencies monitor replies across client accounts?
- How do agencies keep client campaigns separated?
- What happens to cost as client volume grows?
Now you have a credible semantic/product footprint around the category. But not every commercially relevant topic deserves a content investment.
My tip: If a topic is highly relevant but requires a huge authority investment to win, has limited commercial upside, and doesn’t expose the product to many qualified buyers, it may be a lower priority than a smaller topic where you already have a credible right to compete.
If your page is good but still doesn’t rank, stop blaming content
Content quality is only one part of the ranking equation. Before commissioning another rewrite, check what else might be holding the page back.
Teams will commission three pieces, then ask two days after publishing why they aren’t ranking. Your blog is just one tiny piece of the content puzzle. Much stronger forces are at play here.
Diagnose the ranking problem layer by layer.
Technical
- Is it indexed?
- Can Google crawl it?
- Are canonicals/rendering correct?
Cannibalization
- Is another URL competing for the same query?
- Is Google ranking the wrong page?
- Do several pages serve the same intent?
Internal authority
- Is the page buried?
- Do relevant, authoritative pages link to it?
- Does the site architecture signal that this is an important commercial page?
External authority
- Do competitors have significantly stronger links, mentions, reviews, and category authority?
- Are they consistently recommended by third-party sources?
Positioning
- Does the rest of the site reinforce what this page says?
- Is the brand clearly associated with this use case/category?
Competitive gap
- Are ranking pages simply better now?
- Do they have fresher data, stronger evidence, firsthand testing, or better tools?
If your problem lies anywhere here, content itself can’t solve it.
Look beyond the SERP
For an important commercial category, ranking your own page is only one visibility surface. You also need to influence the sources buyers and AI systems use to shortlist options.
See where AI actually gets its answers and where you stand (or don’t).
AI might be getting answers from your site, or pulling from reviews, forums, comparison pages, partner sites, industry publications, social conversations, or other sources buyers use to evaluate the category.
Map all the external sources shaping discovery and consideration. Then work out where your brand is absent, misrepresented, or not considered.
So for important BOFU categories, I’d look at:
- Does ChatGPT recommend us?
- Does Perplexity mention us?
- Do Reddit/category discussions include us?
- Do third-party “best X” pages include us?
- Does LinkedIn conversation associate us with this use case?
Then earn that visibility and discovery:
- Get included in relevant comparison pages
- Strengthen your presence on review platforms
- Contribute expert insights to industry publications
- Participate in relevant communities
- Build partnerships
- Publish original research, proprietary data, strong opinions, useful frameworks, and expert-led content that others have a reason to reference
Use my decision tree when an important BOFU keyword isn’t ranking to diagnose what’s holding it back and decide what to do next:
Key takeaway: Diagnose before creating
An important BOFU keyword you don’t rank for isn’t automatically a content gap. So don’t immediately commission another article.
First, figure out why you’re not winning the query.
Then figure out what you need to do to satisfy the SERP, match search intent, and gain a competitive advantage. You must also consider whether the opportunity is valuable enough to justify the investment.
Want to work together? Get in touch.
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