Original research is great for two things: backlinks and thought leadership. Backlinks are links to your site from other sites. They are important because they help you rank in Google (one of the key ranking factors). Original research, such as data studies, case studies, industry surveys, etc., attracts backlinks because other authors use them as sources. In turn, pages with a lot of backlinks accumulate authority, which you can guide to other valuable pages on your site to help them rank (see Middleman Method). For example, our study on why most content on the web gets no organic traffic earned 5.9K backlinks from 2.8K referring domains and still keeps earning them without any effort from our side.
Retain users by educating them Publish original
In SaaS, one of the biggest challenges is churn—the proportion of customers who stop paying for your product top industry data or service. We never believe in any marketing hacks that supposedly stop people from canceling their plans when they want to. Instead, we’re trying to educate users so that they know how to use Ahrefs and get the most value out of the product. Product-led content is one example, but there are more. For example, if a user is just starting out with Ahrefs or SEO, they can find complete courses in our Academy.
Network at industry events Publish original
At the startup/small company level, what’s important for SaaS companies BO Leads at industry events is networking rather than sales. You can learn a lot from other SaaS companies and people who use their products. You may even meet your own users. Thing is, you don’t really need a large budget to attend industry events because you don’t really need to be an exhibitor or a sponsor. You can come up with an interesting topic and pitch as a speaker. Zero cost. You can just go there as a regular attendee. Minimal cost.