Bottom of funnel keyword patterns

Keyword tools sort by volume, which is why so many SaaS content plans open with a 14,000 search term that produces four trials a quarter. Sort the same list by conversion and a different set of pages rises to the top, most of them boring, most of them under 500 searches a month.

The fourteen patterns below are ordered by how well they convert, not how much traffic they bring. The first five cover most of the buying intent available to a typical B2B SaaS product, and I would build all five before publishing a single informational post.

The fourteen patterns, ranked by conversion

Volumes are typical ranges from keyword tools for mid-market B2B categories in the US, and conversion ranges are what I would expect from a well built page with a visible signup path. Both vary enormously by category. Treat them as planning assumptions to replace with your own data after a quarter, and model the traffic side with the organic traffic forecast calculator before committing headcount.

1. Competitor alternatives

The person typing zendesk alternatives has already decided to leave. Your job is to be a credible option on a page that does not insult their intelligence, which means the listicle includes competitors other than you, ranked with reasons.

Build it as a ranked list of five to eight tools, you at position one with a stated reason, and a comparison table covering price, core differentiator and best fit. Include the competitor you are targeting as a legitimate entry with its real strengths.

Refresh quarterly. Competitor pricing changes and a stale price is both a credibility problem and, in several markets, a legal one under comparative advertising rules.

2. Head to head comparisons

ahrefs vs semrush and asana vs monday are the archetypes. These pages rank hardest because third party sites compete for them, and they convert best because the reader is at the final step.

Two rules make the difference. Say where the competitor genuinely wins, because a page that only praises itself gets read as marketing and bounces. And end with a verdict that names who should pick each one, since a comparison without a recommendation leaves the decision exactly where it started.

Include a last-checked date on the pricing row. Nothing damages a comparison page faster than quoting a plan that was retired eight months ago.

3. Best category software

best applicant tracking system carries the biggest volume of the top five and the most competition, usually from review sites and media publishers with far more authority than a vendor.

Build it anyway, but build it as the most specific version you can win: best applicant tracking system for agencies rather than the head term. Include yourself, disclose that you do, and rank honestly. Vendors who bury their own product at position four and explain why gain more trust than the ones who do not.

4. Legacy tool replacement

jira replacement, sharepoint replacement, spreadsheet to crm. Small volume, very high intent, and usually uncontested because incumbents do not write these and other challengers have not thought of it.

The page should lead with migration, not features. What happens to existing data, how long the move takes, whether there is an import tool, what breaks. Linear built a large part of its early positioning on people actively trying to leave Jira, and the pages that serve that search answer the switching cost question before the feature question.

5. Category for vertical

crm for real estate agents, accounting software for nonprofits, project management for construction. Forty to nine hundred searches, and the highest close rate of anything at that volume because the qualifier is doing the segmentation for you.

These pages fail when they are the generic page with a vertical swapped into the H1. They work when they carry the vertical’s actual vocabulary, one named customer from that vertical, and a screenshot of a workflow that industry recognises. The structure for this sits inside a proper keyword map so each vertical gets one owning URL and no two pages compete.

6. Competitor pricing

salesforce pricing and gong pricing attract enormous volume, mostly from people researching that vendor rather than looking for you. Conversion is lower than the patterns above but the volume compensates.

Do it as an accurate teardown of their public pricing with your own comparison underneath. Be scrupulous about accuracy and date every figure. This is the pattern most likely to generate a complaint from a competitor’s legal team, and being demonstrably factual is the entire defence.

7. App integration pages

slack salesforce integration and its thousands of siblings. Zapier built a large share of its organic footprint on this pattern, with a page per app pairing carrying genuinely unique setup detail.

The test that tells you if yours will work: does the page contain the specific fields that map between the two tools, the steps to authenticate, and a screenshot of the result. If it contains only the two product names swapped into a template, it will not index at scale.

8. Category for company size

hr software for small business, crm for enterprise. The same logic as vertical pages, applied to the axis buyers use when they suspect a tool is built for someone larger or smaller than them.

Worth building the two or three sizes you genuinely serve, and worth explicitly saying who you are not for. Naming the segment you do not fit removes trials that would have churned and raises the conversion rate of everything else.

9. App to app

export hubspot contacts to google sheets, sync stripe with quickbooks. Very small volume each, thousands of possible combinations, which makes this the clearest programmatic candidate on the list.

Launch 25, check indexation after six weeks, and scale only if more than 60 percent get indexed. This is the pattern where teams publish 800 pages and get 60, then conclude programmatic does not work.

10. Category software for a region or compliance regime

gdpr compliant analytics, hipaa compliant crm, eu hosted project management. Thirty to six hundred searches and the highest conversion on this list, because a compliance requirement is a hard filter and anyone searching it has already disqualified most of the market.

PostHog and the privacy focused analytics tools grew meaningfully on exactly this pattern. The page needs the actual detail: where data is stored, which certifications you hold and their dates, if you will sign a BAA or a DPA. Vague reassurance converts nobody in this pattern.

11. Category pricing

help desk software pricing, crm pricing. The searcher wants to know what the category costs before they shortlist. Give them real ranges across named vendors, then your own model.

Conversion is modest, but these pages get linked by procurement guides and cited in AI answers because they contain structured, comparable numbers that most vendor sites deliberately hide.

12. Open source category

open source crm, open source product analytics. A specific audience with a strong preference and a low tolerance for a vendor pretending to be something it is not.

If you have an open source edition, this is a strong pattern. If you do not, you can still rank with an honest roundup that includes the open source options and explains the hosting, support and compliance tradeoffs. Do not enter this one with a page that claims to be open source because a client library is on GitHub.

13. Free tool pages

free invoice generator, free utm builder, free logo maker. HubSpot, Ahrefs and Canva all run large free tool sets and they earn serious volume and referring domains.

Judge them on links and emails, not trials. A free tool that pulls 12,000 monthly sessions and 300 referring domains is doing its job even at a 0.8 percent trial rate, because those links lift the pages that do convert. Keep the build under two weeks or the economics stop working, and check the cost side against your demand capture channel payback numbers.

14. Category templates

project plan template, invoice template, okr template. The largest volume on the list and the weakest purchase intent, because most searchers want a free file and nothing else.

Build a gallery where using the template inside your product is the natural next step rather than downloading a file. Notion and Monday both run this well by making the template open in-product. Done as a PDF download it captures emails and rarely more.

What to build, and in what order

Phase	What to ship	Time to first rankings	What to expect
Month 1 to 2	One alternatives page per named competitor, plus your top 3 head to head comparisons	6 to 12 weeks	First trials from organic within a quarter, volume small
Month 3 to 4	One qualified best-of page, 2 legacy replacement pages, 3 vertical pages	8 to 16 weeks	Conversion rate per page holds, total volume roughly triples
Month 5 to 8	Integration set launched in batches of 25, company size pages, compliance page	12 to 20 weeks	Indexation becomes the constraint, not writing
Month 9 onward	Free tool or template gallery, plus refreshes of everything above	16 weeks plus	Links and email capture rise, trial rate per session falls

The objection to this order is real: bottom of funnel volume runs out fast. A mid-market SaaS might exhaust the genuinely high intent patterns in 40 pages, which is maybe six months of work. That is fine. Build them, then move up the funnel with the bottom of funnel content already in place to catch what the informational pages warm up.

The second honest caveat: these pages need maintenance. Pricing changes, competitors rebrand, features ship. Budget a quarterly refresh cycle from the start, because a comparison page with 2024 pricing does more damage than no page at all.

Where to start on Monday

Pick your three most named competitors and write their alternatives pages this fortnight, then the three head to head comparisons that pair you against them. That is six pages, roughly three weeks of work, and it covers the two highest converting patterns on the list.

Run the same patterns through your paid account while you wait, since PPC keyword research on these exact terms tells you within two weeks which ones actually convert for your product, and a negative keyword list keeps the test clean. Then expand using the full SaaS keyword research process, and slot the results into the wider SaaS SEO plan rather than treating them as a one-off sprint.