How UXfolio Nailed SEO Strategy: 7 Lessons for SaaS SEOs

What does it take to build an SEO strategy that actually works for a SaaS product?

If you’re looking for a ready-to-use playbook, look no further than UXfolio. We sat down with Ákos Izsák, Product Lead at UXfolio, to uncover how they grew their traffic — and more importantly, signups — using smart SEO moves.

These tips are gold for SaaS marketers. Here’s what we learned.

1. Start with Topics, Not Just Keywords

When UXfolio kicked off their SEO strategy, they didn’t just jump into a keyword tool and start typing in thousands of random terms.

Their first step was to zoom out a bit. Their team brainstormed topics that made sense for their target audience — things like “UX careers” and “portfolio building.” Only after that brainstorming session did they throw those topics into Ahrefs to see what keywords had solid search volume but weren’t impossible to rank for.

This gave them a focus list of 3-4 core keywords to build around:

• "UX portfolio"
• "Product design portfolio"
• "UX portfolio template"
• "UX researcher portfolio"

Takeaway: Before you go on a keyword safari, step back and think about the big topics your audience cares about and your product covers.

Read more: The SEO Checklist for SaaS: 6 Steps to Improve Performance [A 2025 Guide]

2. Create Cornerstone Content for Target Keywords

For each of those core keywords, UXfolio created cornerstone articles. These were in-depth, value-packed blog posts, designed to rank.

The bad news: SEO doesn’t end with publishing cornerstone content.

Keeping your blog active - meaning, publishing more or less regularly - signals to Google that your site is alive.

To keep the content flowing, UXfolio also published interviews with UX pros. These weren’t optimized for SEO purposes — they served to keep the blog fresh and also to improve UXfolio’s niche authority.

What’s another perks of talking to industry experts?

These interviews helped UXfolio get backlinks super easily because the UX professionals shared them with their audiences. Instant promotion + backlinks + traffic + raise in topical authority = win-win.

3. Right Distribution Takes You Far

Publishing content is just the first step. UXfolio developed a content distribution checklist:

• Post in relevant Facebook groups
• Share in UX Slack communities
• Submit to niche sites where designers hang out

This promo plan didn’t just bring in traffic — it also triggered organic backlinks from communities that actually mattered for UXfolio’s authority.

Takeaway for SaaS marketers: it’s not enough to hit ‘Publish’ in the content management system. You need to spread the word about your content wherever you can.

Steal UXfol.io's SEO hacks that've helped them dominate search results

4. You Still Need To Build Links

Link-building in SaaS is a must, as it allows you to beat competition in search results. Even with all that organic love, UXfolio had to get their hands dirty with manual link-building to get to the top of the search results.

They reverse-engineered the top-ranking pages for their target keywords and analyzed their backlinks. That gave them a clear target for how many backlinks and referring domains they needed to compete.

Then came the toughest part: the link-building outreach. That involved hours of manual prospecting and crafting personalized emails. Oftentimes, the team could not find email addresses of content manager or editors and had to send a generic email to Support, hoping to reach the right person in the end.

As Ákos put it:

“I wish we had a tool like Ranking Raccoon back then. Link building would have been so much easier!”

Moral of the story: content is the first step, but backlinks are the power-ups that get you to page one.

5. Traffic is Nice. Conversions are Better

To attract traffic is good. But what matters even more is user engagement.

For Google, high user engagement signals that the site is useful. Hence, the search engine will push it further up in the search results.

Here’s where UXfolio’s strategy really shines: they didn’t just chase traffic. They also optimized their pages to turn visitors into actual signups.

What helped them move the needle? Analyzing users’ onsite behaviour.

Hotjar heatmaps showed them where people clicked — and it wasn’t where they expected. In most cases, designers (UXfolio’s target audience) clicked on the links in images and image captions or text links next to the images.

So they added registration links right around images and in the first paragraph with clear CTAs like “Try our free UX portfolio template.”

Key takeaway: SEO brings the traffic, but conversion optimization closes the deal. The two should work together in harmony.

6. Search Intent is Everything

One of UXfolio’s early mistakes was misunderstanding search intent. For example, as Ákos told us, they assumed that people searching “UX portfolio” wanted educational content. Turns out, what searchers actually wanted was portfolio examples and visuals.

The fix? They made their cornerstone article more visual — featuring large images of portfolios and linking directly to templates.

So, if you’re a SaaS SEO, ask yourself, “What is the searcher really looking for?” Sometimes the answer isn’t a 2,000-word guide — it might be an image gallery, a checklist, or even a tool.

7. Know Your Audience Inside Out

The final (and maybe most important) lesson? Know your users.

UXfolio didn’t guess what content to create — they asked real UX designers what they struggled with. This user-first mindset shaped everything from topic selection to content format to the CTAs they used.

Pro tip: When in doubt, talk to your existing and potential customers. They’ll tell you what they want to see — and when you create that, Google will reward you for it.

To sum it up: UXfolio’s SEO Checklist for SaaS Marketers

If you want a TL;DR you can put into practice, here’s UXfolio’s battle-tested checklist:

1. Tech SEO first: Fix your sitemap, robots.txt, redirects (Screaming Frog is an incredibly helpful tool)
2. Internal links matter: Always link new posts to older ones
3. Supplemental content builds authority: not every post needs to rank — some just need to build credibility
4. Level up your copywriting: read books by copywriting pros (Sugarman, Trunk, Stephen King, Ogilvy)
5. Conversion optimization is just as important as SEO. Use heatmaps (e.g. on Microsoft Clarity or other platforms), test CTAs, and optimize for action
6. Nail search intent: give people what they actually want
7. Talk to real users: they’re your best SEO advisors!

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