How to Increase Website Traffic While Building Your SaaS in Public

To increase website traffic while building your SaaS in public, turn problems you solve into useful pages on your website. Share those pages through relevant public updates, then measure which visitors reach a meaningful step in your product.

This creates a practical connection between development work, content, and customer acquisition.

You already encounter questions while building. Some of those questions may also matter to the people who could use your product. The opportunity is to write an answer they can apply.

Start with a problem your future users recognize

Imagine you’re building a CSV import tool for developers.

During development, you discover several ways an import can fail: missing headers, unexpected separators, or rows with inconsistent fields.

Each issue could become a useful explanation for someone implementing an import workflow.

For example:

How to Find CSV Formatting Errors Before Importing a File

That is an illustrative topic, not a claim about its search volume. Before committing to it, check whether it appears in customer conversations and relevant search results.

Read the existing answers. Look for something you can contribute: a clearer example, a reproducible failure, a useful diagnostic step, or an explanation of a limitation.

Google’s guidance on helpful content emphasizes original value and helping an intended audience achieve its goal. A page grounded in a problem you can demonstrate gives you material to meet that standard.

Build a page that delivers the answer

For the CSV example, a useful guide might follow this structure:

1. Explain the error and its likely cause.
2. Show a small file that reproduces it.
3. Walk through the diagnosis.
4. Show the corrected file.
5. Explain which cases the fix does and doesn’t cover.

Put the answer near the top. A reader facing an import failure should be able to identify the next step quickly.

Use the rest of the page to help them understand and verify that step.

Include actual examples from work you can reproduce. If a screenshot adds useful context, include it. If the explanation works better with a short code sample, use that.

Let the problem determine the length.

A useful product invitation can follow naturally:

Want to check your own sample file? Open the CSV validator and review the errors before importing.

The destination should support that action directly.

Turn the guide into a useful public update

Your public post should contain something valuable on its own.

For the hypothetical CSV tool, an update could explain:

A CSV file can open cleanly in a spreadsheet and still fail an import. This example has inconsistent fields across rows. Here’s the small check I used to find the mismatch, plus a sample file you can test.

Then link to the complete guide.

Someone can learn from the post immediately. Readers who need the full walkthrough have a reason to visit your site.

Adapt the emphasis to the audience. A developer discussion can focus on the failure and fix. A founder update can explain what the issue taught you about onboarding.

On Buildside, you can share the product progress behind the guide and invite feedback from other SaaS founders. Make the connection to their work clear, especially when the underlying topic is technical.

Label the links you share

Campaign parameters help you identify visits associated with a particular distribution effort.

For example, you can create a tagged link for a guide shared on DEV.to:

const url = new URL(
  "https://example.com/guides/csv-import-errors"
);

url.searchParams.set("utm_source", "devto");
url.searchParams.set("utm_medium", "referral");
url.searchParams.set("utm_campaign", "csv_import_guide");

console.log(url.toString());

Use consistent names so your reports stay readable. If you share the same guide elsewhere, change the source while preserving the campaign name.

Google’s campaign URL documentation explains these parameters and how campaign information appears in Google Analytics.

Tagging links gives you attribution information. Measuring product use requires the relevant events to be recorded as well.

For the CSV tool, that might mean tracking a visitor’s first successful validation.

Measure referral traffic and Google search traffic separately

A useful review looks at both distribution and discovery.

For a website you control, Search Console’s Performance report shows the queries and pages associated with Google search impressions and clicks.

That helps you make more specific decisions.

If people find the guide through a question you answer poorly, improve that section.

If readers reach the guide but rarely follow the product invitation, check whether the next step fits the problem they came to solve.

If people try the product and get stuck, investigate the experience before increasing promotion.

Treat these as hypotheses to examine. A single traffic change rarely explains itself.

Let real questions shape the next article

Keep a small list of questions that appear while people use your product:

• What did they misunderstand?
• Where did they need an example?
• Which failure required an explanation longer than a quick reply?

When a question recurs, consider turning your answer into a page you can reuse in support, onboarding, and public updates.

Record the topic, publication date, places you shared it, and the customer action you hoped it would help.

That gives you a manageable publishing process tied to the product you’re actually building.

Start with one problem you recently solved and can reproduce. Write the answer, include a working example, and share it with people likely to encounter the same issue. Let their questions guide the next revision.