Am I doing SEO correctly or just getting lucky?

Hi guys,

I've been doing SEO mostly off instinct since October for our B2B SaaS and I'd love a reality check from people who have scaled SEO for software companies.

We started at basically 0 organic traffic in October and are now at roughly:

• 125 clicks/month
• 6.5k impressions/month
• 2% CTR
• Average position ~16

(Search Console screenshot in comments)

Some context:

• B2B SaaS CRM for agencies
• DR 19
• Around 40 free tools
• Articles, comparison pages, feature pages, and tools
• Tools seem to be driving the majority of growth
• Around 250-300 leads/month from organic
• Around 30 trials/month
• 58% trial-to-paid conversion rate

Our strategy from day one has been pretty simple:

Instead of trying to rank for huge terms like "CRM" or "CRM for agencies", we started by targeting very specific niches such as "best CRM for Instagram agencies."

The idea was to win tiny niches first, build authority, and then slowly expand into broader and broader categories over time.

Right now it feels like that approach is working. We can rank for highly specific commercial-intent keywords despite only having DR 19, but when I look at broader keywords the SERPs are dominated by HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, etc.

My current process is:

• Use DataForSEO and Semrush to find competitors
• See what content is driving traffic
• Create better versions or adjacent content
• Build tools around problems people search for
• Track what gains traction and kill what doesn't

One thing I'm increasingly worried about is that we're attracting too much TOFU traffic and not enough MOFU/BOFU traffic.

A lot of our growth has come from free tools, which is great for traffic and lead generation, but I'm not sure if we're accidentally optimizing for visitors rather than buyers.

We currently don't have sophisticated email nurturing in place for these users yet, so many people use a tool, give us their details, and that's pretty much where the journey ends.

The tools generate a lot of leads and some convert surprisingly well, but I'm not sure whether that's proof the strategy is working or whether we're leaving a lot of money on the table by not focusing more aggressively on commercial-intent keywords.

What I'm trying to figure out is whether the next step should be:

1. Continue expanding from niche → broader keywords
2. Invest heavily in backlinks and listings
3. Double down on free tools
4. Focus more on comparison pages, alternatives pages, integrations, use cases, and other high-intent content
5. Something else entirely

For those of you who've grown SaaS SEO:

• Is the niche → broader keyword progression the right play?
• At what point do you start targeting larger categories?
• Would you focus on backlinks or more content at this stage?
• Are free tools still one of the best growth levers in 2026?
• How do you balance TOFU traffic with MOFU/BOFU traffic?
• If you were DR 19 today, what would your next 12 months look like?

I can't really benchmark against competitors because many of them are doing hundreds of millions in ARR and have spent a decade building authority.

I'm trying to figure out whether I should stay the course or if I'm missing something obvious.

If you have lasted till here I would love your opinion, thanks.

submitted by /u/martis941
[link] [comments]

from The SEO Authority https://ift.tt/RALGTOQ