When you are building a SaaS product, there are so many things you need to own.

As a founder, you would be doing Sales & Customer support. You’ll be talking to leads and understanding their ICPs, their problems. You’ll be talking with your early customers, the ones who are the first investors in your success.

And you have to ship, ship, ship. Ship relentlessly.

Amidst this relentless focus on Sales & Product, SEO ends up being the last thing on the list.

And for good reason. SEO takes time in giving you benefits. And, you likely don’t know what’s going right, and what isn’t.

SEO is a long-term investment

Your websites Domain authority & topical authority takes time to build up.

And not just that. Amidst the noise about backlinks and content creation with GPT, it is hard to know just what you need to do.

At VdoCipher, in 2016 we were spending about Rs. 1 lakh per month on performance marketing - specifically Google Ads.

It took us a little more than an year to get to first position for our top keywords. There were a couple of mis-steps, and also a couple of hits at that time.

It’s important to get the foundations right

SEO is one of the most reliable channels to drive demand. However, it’s not just about getting traffic.

In the early stages, your focus has to indeed be on - getting domain authority and building up a body of content. And laying content guidelines and policies that will scale for you.

Stage 1 - Keep finding your editorial voice

This is one thing you should get right. At this stage, SEO will not be the GPT-accelerated content machine. But a heavily human-in-the-loop process.

It’s definitely okay to rely on GPTs to do the research for you, and to write the first drafts.

The human-in-the-loop is to ensure that there is an appropriate quality to the content. For example, the content should be conversational. As of February 2025, AI-generated content still continues to be by default a bunch of word salad. The content ends up often lacking in substance if the research is not done properly.

At this stage, your impressions will be increasing.

Stage 2 - Build up a body of content

At this stage, we make the process scalable.

At this stage, you should go for clicks

Stage 3 - Optimize your leads funnel

Keep track of overall leads. But till that time, look at:

  1. Overall impressions on Search Engine traffic - that’s the first thing that will increase
  2. Clicks - finally something tangible, if only from an SEO standpoint
  3. Leads - when this number is steadily increasing

Stage 4

Improve quality over time

So, why do founders find it hard to focus on SEO?

AI can get you started, and can help you build first drafts.

But a human in the loop is not going anywhere.

Agency model is broken - they are expensive, and their goal is their retainer

Agencies will prepare detailed SEO & keyword reports for you.

While undoubtedly these are important.

But the key to SEO is - publish good quality content, handle the basics of technical SEO. And iterate.

You need an SEO Partner

Don’t expect your SEO partners to have answers on Day 1.

What you should expect from your SEO partner is - a willingness to understand your business, and to understand what your customers are like.