Keyword research for indie SaaS (without an agency)
How founders pick keywords that match real search intent, without paying an agency or drowning in spreadsheets.
Most indie founders treat keyword research like a homework assignment they never finish. You open a tool, export 400 phrases, stare at the list, then go back to shipping features. That is not a strategy. It is procrastination with extra steps.
Start from jobs, not volumes
Your buyers are not searching for "best branding platform." They are trying to solve a named problem: ship a credible UI, explain what the product does, stop rewriting the homepage every month. Write those jobs down first. Each job becomes a seed question.
Run those questions through search and read the titles on page one. If every result is a listicle from 2019, you still learn something: the SERP expects a beginner explainer. Match that shape or pick a narrower angle you can win.
Build a tiny keyword map
You need three buckets:
- Problem keywords: "saas brand looks generic", "design tokens nextjs"
- Solution keywords: "brand guidelines for developers", "export design tokens"
- Comparison keywords: "brand kit vs design system", "figma to code tokens"
Keep ten to fifteen phrases total for your first quarter. That is enough to plan a blog post, a docs page, and two social threads without spreading thin.
Tie keywords to pages you will actually ship
Every keyword should land on a URL you intend to maintain. For Majico, that usually means a blog article, an existing docs page, or the studio canvas. If a phrase has no home, drop it until you have one.
What good enough looks like
You do not need perfect search volume data on day one. You need a question real people type, a page that answers it in plain language, and internal links so Google understands how your site fits together. Ship one post, watch Search Console for four weeks, rewrite the title if CTR is weak, then ship the next.
Practical weekly rhythm
Monday: pick one job-to-be-done from customer calls. Tuesday: run five searches, save ten URLs. Wednesday: outline H2s from SERP gaps. Thursday: draft. Friday: publish and link from docs.
Repeat. Agencies charge for this cadence. You can run it in ninety minutes once the habit sticks.
For the product side of branding, start with create your first brand and export tokens when you are ready to code against them in export and use in code.