SEO
We Studied 100 SaaS Twitter Profiles to Uncover Top Trends: Here’s What We Found
Every company on Twitter has the same features at its disposal to create a standout profile.
Here are those features:
But how many SaaS companies make use of them all? And are they using them well?
To find out, we studied the Twitter profiles of 100 SaaS companies.
Let’s start at the top.
Sidenote.
Thanks to my colleague, Rebecca Liew, for doing most of the research for this post. She’s the one who shares all the useful SEO tips, threads, and product updates on our Twitter account, so make sure to follow us if you’re not doing so already.
37% of SaaS companies feature their mission statement or tagline in their banner, making it the most popular option.
Here’s a super clean example from Zapier:
The next most popular option (25%) is a branded illustration, like this one from Asana:
Product illustrations are also a relatively popular choice, with 14% of SaaS companies opting for them.
Here’s an example from InVision:
This demonstrates how its collaboration features work without falling into the trap of showing cluttered screenshots of the literal UI.
Unfortunately, while these kinds of banners work well on desktop, they’re rarely great on mobile.
For example, much of InVision’s banner is obfuscated by the notch and UI elements on my iPhone:
Even without the obfuscation, the product text is super tiny and hard to read. This issue is magnified for SaaS companies that use their literal product UI.
Case in point, Linear:
These are things we’re always conscious of when designing banners for our profile, as you can tell from the mockup below:
As for the remaining 24% of SaaS companies, we saw everything from, um, nothing…
… to generic stock photography (seriously, Airtable, what is this all about?)
… to folks with Swiss roll hair rollers (is this how you capture the millennial market? *takes notes*):
Bland, boring, and zany examples aside, one interesting trend I noticed is that many companies don’t just set a banner and forget it. They swap it to coincide with new feature releases, events, new industry awards, new content, open job positions, etc.
Here are a couple of examples:
Given the number of profile views SaaS companies like Drift and Webflow likely get, this makes a lot of sense.
In fact, this is something we do too.
Here’s our banner promoting our list of Ahrefs hacks:
Key takeaways + our advice
- 62% of companies feature a mission statement, tagline, or branded illustration – These are all good choices for a “default” Twitter banner. They help reinforce your brand identity and tell potential followers what you’re all about.
- 14% of companies feature their products – It makes sense to swap out your “default” banner for this to coincide with product announcements. Just remember to design them with mobile UIs and notches in mind.
- 24% of companies feature something else – It’s probably best to avoid zany and vague banners unless you’re a household brand or are trying to tie your Twitter presence to an advertising campaign. However, it makes sense to showcase time-sensitive things like upcoming events, awards you’ve won, job positions, etc.
100% of SaaS companies feature their logo (or some variation) here.
Big surprise, right? So why am I even bothering to mention it?
The answer is that I want to draw your attention to a mistake some brands make, which is being hell-bent on using their full text-heavy logo.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with including your full logo when it has a short “horizontal length.”
Take Wix, for example:
This works just fine. It’s easy to read and recognize on desktop and mobile—even in the small feed icons:
But this works less well for brands with logos with a wider “horizontal length.”
Case in point, Talenox:
This is virtually impossible to read on mobile and doesn’t grab your attention in the feed:
I can’t help but feel the icon alone would be much better at grabbing your attention.
Here’s a mockup:
Interestingly, this is a lesson learned from personal experience. We used to have our profile photo set to our “full width” logo, but we soon realized our mistake and changed it to the custom branded icon you see today:
Key takeaways + our advice
- 100% of SaaS companies set their profile photo as their logo – You probably should too. Just make sure to use an icon from your logo or a shorter version if it’s text-heavy.
Most companies (68%) use their bio to reflect what their product or service does.
Here’s an example from Mailchimp:
Even if you knew nothing about Mailchimp before coming across its Twitter profile, you’d end up with a pretty good idea about what it’s selling from its bio alone.
But what about everyone else?
Well, 28% of companies use it to state their company mission.
Here’s an example from Asana:
If you’re none the wiser about what Asana actually is or does after that, join the club. And this isn’t even vague compared to some. Check out Cialfo’s:
Luckily, the final 4% of companies are being a bit more creative. They seem to either highlight what to expect from following them like BrightLocal or opt for a pure fun approach like Shopify.
(I like how BrightLocal notes “Tweets by Jenny.” Definitely adds a personal touch!)
Key takeaways + our advice
- 68% of companies explain what their product or service does – This is always a safe bet that helps potential followers understand what you’re all about.
- 28% of companies state their mission or tagline – This is probably not the best choice unless you’re already a household name and it’s more important to convey a “message” than what you do.
- 4% of companies use their bio for something else – I’d avoid the zany “fun” bios unless you’re a household name. They’re vague and unhelpful in most cases. As for telling potential followers what they can expect from you, that makes sense—especially if you only post very specific things on Twitter like product updates.
- Personal touches are… a nice touch – Hardly any SaaS brands do this, but I think adding “Tweets by [name]” is a great way to humanize your brand (assuming the tweets are actually by one person, of course).
Most SaaS companies (58.4%) don’t utilize bio links.
Here’s what we mean by bio links, by the way:
They’re the ones that are actually in the bio (not the dedicated “website” link).
Basically, any URL or Twitter handle (e.g., @ahrefs) you mention in your bio automatically gets turned into a link.
For example, here’s me setting up my bio…
… and the result:
But of those that do use them, what do they use them for?
Here’s the data:
Sidenote.
These don’t add up to 100% because some companies include multiple links.
60% of SaaS companies include support links.
These are either links to dedicated support Twitter profiles (e.g., @asksalesforce)…
… website support hubs
… or both:
19% of brands link to a status page or profile:
Interestingly, most of the brands doing this are project management (Airtable, Monday, Miro, etc.) or community apps (Slack, Circle, etc.). Given how much it can impact your day when these kinds of tools go down, that makes perfect sense.
19% of brands link to their homepage:
(Given that the homepage link is almost always duplicated in the profile link, this seems like a waste of space to me. I’m not sure why it’s so common.)
And the final 26% of brands link elsewhere, such as to a newsletter signup page…
… their social profiles and communities
… or even branded hashtags:
Initially, I thought the branded hashtag was a bit of an odd choice for quite a small brand. However, it actually makes sense, as it’s basically a feed of success stories (big and small) from customers who love the software.
Here are a couple of examples:
Key takeaways + our advice
- 58.4% of companies don’t utilize bio links – This is a waste. Every company has something it could promote here.
- 60% of companies link to support pages or profiles – Given that frustrated customers often take to Twitter
to complainfor support, this seems like an effort to move the conversation somewhere less public. That makes sense, especially as customers are probably going to get faster responses elsewhere anyway. - 19% of companies link to a status page – This seems like a great way to reduce the number of support requests during outages.
- 19% of companies link to their homepage – This seems like a waste of space, as most profiles have a homepage link in the website link section.
- 26% of companies link elsewhere – Newsletter signup pages, communities, and jobs pages are all popular options that make sense. I’d stay clear of branded hashtags unless you’re promoting them elsewhere. Otherwise, I doubt they’ll get much engagement.
Believe it or not, 7% of companies don’t have a profile link.
Of those that do, 95.7% link to their homepage.
This makes sense. It’s the obvious place to link to and probably the best one to direct followers to learn more about your product or brand.
Most of the remaining 4.3% link to a Linktree (or another similar alternative):
This approach seems more common with individual “influencers,” but I think it can also work well for SaaS companies.
Yotpo is a good example. Its Linktree links to:
- Jobs page – Makes sense. If you like a brand enough to follow it on Twitter, there’s a chance you might be interested in working for it.
- Blog post – Specifically, one that explains the benefits of “zero-party data,” which is what its product helps business owners collect.
- Landing page – This is for its “brand accelerator program” (an initiative to help black-owned small businesses grow).
- Press release – This talks about how it made Forbes’ list of the top 100 private cloud companies.
- Homepage – Ah… we got there eventually!
Sidenote.
The page also links to a campaign to “nominate an amazing woman in ecommerce,” but it’s a 404.
Key takeaways + our advice
- 95.7% of companies (if they have a profile link) link to their homepage – I’d recommend this for pretty much every SaaS company too. It’s a solid choice and helps potential followers learn more about what you do.
- 4.3% link elsewhere – Mostly to a Linktree (or similar). This is a fine choice if you want to promote multiple things to followers, like job openings and awards.
Only 55% of SaaS companies use the pinned tweet feature.
Most of those that do (60%) feature a product-related tweet.
Here’s an example from Intercom:
Interestingly, I spotted a lot of brands using videos for this. This makes sense, as there’s really no better way to demonstrate a product feature or explain what your software does. It also allows you to fit more information into your tweet than you’d be able to with 280 characters.
Sidenote.
The tweet character limit for Twitter Blue subscribers is technically 4,000. However, a) not all brands have Twitter Blue and b) 4,000 characters are apparently between 571 and 1,000 words on average—who in their right mind wants to read that much copy in a plain text tweet?
10.9% of brands feature an event, contest, challenge, or poll.
Here’s an example from Litmus:
Obviously, these aren’t just “set it and forget it” pinned tweets. Once the event, challenge, contest, or poll is over, brands swap them out for something else.
What else?
Blog posts and Twitter threads are common, with 5.5% and 3.6% of brands respectively showcasing these in pinned tweets.
Here are a few examples:
Given that Twitter users almost certainly prefer native content, you’re probably better off turning a blog post you want to promote here into a thread instead. You can always promote the blog post at the end.
This is precisely what we did for our current pinned tweet:
These 18 hacks began life as a blog post. But we knew we’d likely get way more engagement by turning them into a Twitter thread.
We then promote our newsletter at the end of the thread:
The remaining 20% of SaaS companies feature other things, like awards they’ve won…
… rebrand announcements
… and white papers:
I think these all make sense—except for white papers.
Even if you’re targeting enterprise customers, I just can’t see many people browsing Twitter and thinking “Oh, cool—a white paper! I’ll download that right away!”
Key takeaways + our advice
- 45% of companies don’t have pinned tweets – Don’t be one of them. Pinned tweets are a useful way to highlight import updates, campaigns, and initiatives.
- 60% of companies have product-related pinned tweets – This is a safe bet, but I think it’s best to use an engaging format like video if possible. This also extends the amount of information you can put in your pinned tweet beyond the 280-character limit.
- 10.9% of companies feature events, contests, challenges, or polls – This makes sense, as you usually want to draw as much attention to these types of events as possible in a limited period of time.
- 5.5% of companies feature blog posts – I would avoid this, as I think few Twitter users want to consume content off the platform.
- 3.6% of companies feature threads – I think there are too many threads on Twitter, but they’re obviously popular so… what do I know? Either way, this is another good way to effectively extend the 280-character tweet limit.
- 20% of companies feature other things – Awards, announcements—basically whatever they want to draw attention to at the moment. Just don’t try to force users to download white papers; I really don’t think anyone on Twitter wants that.
Final thoughts
How you set up your company’s Twitter profile depends on the impression you want to make and the things you want to promote. Just make sure to utilize all the features Twitter gives you to create a standout profile.
If you’re short on time, here’s our best advice to get your profile up and running fast:
Got questions? Ping me on… you know where.
SEO
Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It
Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when…
SEO
8 Free SEO Reporting Tools
There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?
In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.
Price: Free
Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.
Most common reporting use case
GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.
As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:
- Total Impressions
- Average CTR
- Average Position
Tip
But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.
If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.
Price: Free
Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.
Most common reporting use case
Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.
Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.
Such as:
- Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
- Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
- Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
- Social media platforms – Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter
- Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage
Sidenote.
If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks
Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:
With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.
Favorite feature
The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.
Price: Free for 500 URLs
Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.
Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.
Most common reporting use case
When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.
Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.
Favorite feature
Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs.
If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.
Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.
Price: Free
Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.
For example, you could use our:
Most common reporting use case
One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.
With AWT, you can:
- Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
- See the performance of your website
- Check all known backlinks for your website
Favorite feature
Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.
If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).
Price: Free
Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.
Most common reporting use case
For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.
With the free version, you get the following features:
- On-page SEO report
- Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
- Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
- SERP positions
- Country changer for SERP
The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.
If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.
Favorite feature
The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.
Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.
Price: Free
Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.
Most common reporting use case
GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.
Favorite feature
You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.
Price: Free
Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.
Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.
Most common reporting use cases
The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.
This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.
Price: Free
Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.
Most common reporting use cases
Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.
Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.
Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.
Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.
Favorite feature
Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.
Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.
You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.
Final thoughts
These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.
The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.
Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂
SEO
Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO
A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.
These findings include:
- When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
- 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
- Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.
Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.
As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.
High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects
The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.
The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.
The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.
This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.
The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.
Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results
With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.
When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.
Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.
New Competition From Unexpected Sources
The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.
On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.
An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.
Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search
The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.
Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:
“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”
Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.
Methodology & Limitations
To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.
The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.
While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.
Why We Care
The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.
Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.
SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.
As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.
How This Could Help You
While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.
Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:
- As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
- Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
- Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
- Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
- Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.
Looking Ahead
While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.
By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.
Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock
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