HIGH SALIENCE / B2B SOFTWARE
B2B SaaS SEO, AEO and GEO Agency
High Salience is a B2B SaaS SEO, AEO and GEO agency in Colorado, founded by Bike Hawley in 2026, that gets software brands found, cited and recommended in Google and AI search. Software buyers now shortlist with AI before they ever talk to sales. We map who Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Perplexity recommend in your category, which sources feed that answer and what moves it. Built for B2B software companies past $5M ARR with an established market and a category to own. High Salience engagements for B2B SaaS companies start at $7,500 a month, after a $750 Category Salience Brief.
Transcript
Buyers ask ChatGPT who to buy from. Does it say your name? It searches the web and reads what others say. Then it names a few brands, and picks one. Here's the catch. Seventy-eight percent of ChatGPT's recommendations went to brands whose own site did not rank in Google's top ten for the question. So how do you become the pick? Be the brand AI recommends. High Salience.
01Why Software
Why AI search hits B2B software first
B2B software is bought by comparison, which is why AI search hits it first. "Best X for Y", "X vs Y", "X alternatives", "is X worth it": those queries have always decided software shortlists, and they are exactly the questions buyers now put to AI systems. The answer comes back as three to five names, assembled from review sites, comparison pages, analyst coverage, community threads and vendor pages, and the buyer arrives at your demo request already holding an opinion.
That makes software a category where the vendor's own website is rarely enough on its own. The recommendation is built from sources you don't control: the review platforms, comparison publishers, communities and analysts each AI surface keeps citing. If your brand is inaccurate, thin or absent in those sources, the shortlist gets made without you, however well your product page ranks.
It's also the category we know best. The Benchmark 01 query set is commercial SaaS. The worked example analysis is B2B software. The operator background is search-led businesses run on our own P&L.
We also work in fintech, healthcare, law and ecommerce, where AI answers draw on very different sources.
For how the Google and AI halves of that work fit together, see our AI SEO approach.
02The Map
The four search visibility gaps in a B2B software category
The Category Salience Map breaks the visibility problem in a software category into four gaps.
COVERAGE GAP Where you don't appear
The challenger appears in a minority of the commercial query universe while the incumbent appears in most of it: category, comparison, alternative, integration and pricing intent measured together, not a rank report.
RECOMMENDATION GAP Where AI names someone else
On recommendation-intent queries in ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and Perplexity, the brand is rarely named, or named with a description no salesperson would sign off on.
SOURCE GAP Who the answer is built from
A small set of review, comparison and community sources accounts for most citations in the category, and the brand has accurate presence in almost none of them.
RETRIEVAL GAP What can't be quoted
The comparison, alternatives and use-case pages targeting the right demand are structured so that no passage can be cleanly extracted and quoted by an answer engine.
Which of the four is yours, and in what order to attack them, is what the brief answers.
03The Work
What our B2B SaaS SEO and GEO agency services include
Our B2B SaaS SEO and GEO agency services include the same four capabilities in every engagement, and the map decides where each one goes to work.
The software query universe, measured
Category, comparison, alternative, integration, pricing and migration intent, measured across Google and the AI surfaces against the competitors who actually appear, not the ones on your battlecard.
Retrievable pages, resolvable entity, measured recommendation share
Comparison, alternatives, integration and use-case pages an answer engine can quote; entity signals that resolve the product, its category and its differentiators; recommendation share tracked query by query.
Commercial architecture built around how software gets bought
Comparison and alternatives clusters, integration pages, use-case pages and the technical foundation that holds rankings and feeds the AI layer assembled on top of them.
Accurate presence in the sources AI keeps citing
The review platforms, comparison publishers, analyst coverage and communities each surface draws on, earned editorially and monitored as those sources change.
You don't choose between these. The Category Salience Map determines the mix.
04Fit
Who our SaaS SEO agency is built for
High Salience is a SaaS SEO agency built for established software companies with real search demand and a category worth owning.
High Salience is built for
- Established B2B software companies past $5M ARR with real search demand
- A category where comparison and recommendation decide the shortlist
- Competitors already appearing in AI answers where you don't
- A marketing team that can ship changes without a committee
Probably not for you if
- You're pre-product-market fit
- You need rankings or citations guaranteed by a date
- You're comparing us against content retainers on price
- Evidence won't be allowed to change the plan
05The First 90 Days
What to expect in the first 90 days of a SaaS SEO engagement
Once you sign, the first 90 days of a SaaS SEO engagement run through four stages, and the category is remapped every quarter after that.
MAP Weeks 1 to 2
Build the commercial query universe, baseline the competitors, map the recurring sources and fix the measurement set everything gets judged against.
PRIORITIZE Weeks 3 to 4
Identify the retrieval, authority, source and commercial-search gaps. Rank interventions by value and by probability of movement.
INTERVENE Days 30 to 60
Ship the on-site, entity, search and source changes with the biggest expected payoff. Your team implements where it's faster; ours where it isn't.
REMEASURE Days 60 to 90
Resample the original query universe, compare movement against the baseline and reallocate effort into what moved.
REMAP Quarterly
The category gets remapped. Interventions that moved the measurements get more investment; ones that didn't get cut.
06Investment
How much does a B2B SEO agency cost?
The cost of hiring High Salience as a B2B SEO agency follows the work: fees reflect the outcome at stake, and scope comes from what the evidence shows in your category.
From $7,500/month
Focused engagement: typically one market, a concentrated set of constraints and collaborative implementation.
$10,000 to $20,000/month
Category-wide work where several visibility layers, workstreams, markets or substantial execution need to move together.
Most category-wide engagements fall between $10,000 and $20,000/month; larger multi-market, multi-product and execution-heavy programs are scoped separately. Scope is determined by the market, not a package sheet. Every engagement starts with the $750 Category Salience Brief, credited in full against an engagement signed within 60 days.
07FAQs
B2B software AI search FAQs
These answers cover the questions B2B software teams ask about AI search and how the work runs.
Do AI recommendations actually matter for B2B software yet?
AI recommendations already matter for B2B software, even though the volume is still small next to Google. The intent is unusually high: buyers who ask an AI which vendors to consider arrive with a shortlist already formed. The honest position is to measure it in your category before deciding how much it matters, which is what the Category Salience Brief does.
Which sources influence AI recommendations for software?
The sources behind AI recommendations for software vary by category and by surface, which is why we map them rather than assume them. Review platforms, comparison publishers, analyst coverage, community threads and vendors' own comparison pages recur most often. The brief names the specific domains shaping your category's answers.
How long before AI recommendations move?
AI recommendations move at different speeds depending on the fix. Retrieval and entity fixes on your own pages can register within weeks of a re-crawl. Source presence takes longer because it depends on third parties publishing. We remeasure the original query universe at day 90 and quarterly after that, and we don't promise specific citations in systems we don't control.
Can our in-house SEO team work alongside you?
Yes, your in-house SEO team can work alongside us, and it's usually faster. High Salience owns diagnosis, priorities and the source campaigns; your team implements on-site changes wherever it can ship them quicker than we can. The map is shared, so everyone sees what moved.
08Start Here
See who Google ranks and AI recommends in your software category
Before your buyers settle on a shortlist, the brief shows who Google ranks and AI recommends in your software category today. The Category Salience Brief: 15 to 25 commercial queries, 3 to 5 competitors, Google plus the major AI surfaces, verdict first. $750, credited in full against an engagement signed within 60 days.