Technical SEO for SaaS is the act of reviewing a domain or website's crawlability and Google Search Console errors to determine if Google and other search engines can both discover, index and rank any given pages on a domain. Technical SEO for SaaS refers to the notion that only “code-related” issues will get resolved. Meaning, actual backend code, front-end code, robots.txt file issues, and other related problems.
Key Takeaways
- Technical SEO for SaaS is the act of looking at a SaaS company's website for issues that might cause search engine crawlers to have trouble discovering, indexing, and ranking given pages.
- Technical SEO for SaaS can be worth the investment cost (which is usually anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000), especially when it’s combined with a 6 to 12-month strategy that includes on-page or copywriting recommendations.
- Not all technical SEO factors are the same in terms of impact. In fact, many of the “old school” technical SEO factors don’t work to drive performance (rank, impressions, clicks) any longer. However, content recency and discoverability are still highly important technical factors to consider.
Value of Technical SEO for SaaS
In short, probably not. Here’s why. Google and other search engines have become really good at getting around particular technical SEO problems. Think about it: if the “general internet” doesn’t know how to resolve basic issues related to how search engine crawlers find their pages, that essentially means that Google wouldn’t work. Its core product wouldn’t work.
To “find the internet,” as Google does, it had to become really good at discovering pages even if there were basic problems on the page. However, this doesn’t overlook issues or mistakes where website owners are specifically telling search engines to avoid capturing pages (like accidentally adding a “no-index” tag to the HTML, which is far more common than you may think).
Technical SEO for SaaS: Ranked by Impact
Here are technical SEO steps that a SaaS business can take to help it rank higher. While there aren’t too many technical tasks left in the toolkit that can actually help a page or domain rank higher, these are definitely some of them.
1. Adding a sitemap.xml or updated date
Freshness or recency is a very important ranking factor in Google and other search engines in 2024 and going into 2025. Here’s why: if you search for something on Google—they want to give you the most recent and up-to-date information.
We can see this if we happen to search for something that’s related to news. At the top of the page is something very relevant and new. It usually satisfies your search query.
One very important technical SEO task is to ensure that you have a functioning sitemap.xml file that’s submitted to Google Search Console. This can tell search engines when pages were updated so it can queue the crawler to go look at those pages.
In addition, while this is more of an on-page optimization but falls into the bucket of technical SEO, adding an “updated date” or “published date” to all pages can be very useful as well. Google and other crawlers will look at both the sitemap.xml file AND the page’s date itself and see when it was updated. This is what makes dates and times appear on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Lastly, you can add date and time to schema.org markup as well. It will look something like this:
"datePublished":"2024-04-04T15:28:30+00:00",
"dateModified":"2024-04-04T16:24:45+00:00",
An easy way to get schema.org datePublished and dateModified into your pages is to use a tool like Yoast (assuming you’re using WordPress).
2. Ensuring pages can get indexed
Topical authority and authority building is one of the best tactics to help pages and domains rank for given keywords. Google and other search engines are starting to look for EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust). The way it does this is by measuring how many new insights you’re bringing to the internet (information gain) around topics that are highly related to your industry or your niche/space.
Let’s say you have some pages on your domain that are not getting indexed by Google. Go through the Google Search Console errors around “blocked by no-index” or any type of page that’s not getting indexed. Usually, my recommendation is to make sure that ALL pages on your website can get indexed and crawled and then allow Google to do the magic for you.
It’s better to give Google more information and data than not.
3. JavaScript and pages that can get indexed
SaaS companies and those who are highly technical might try to use JavaScript-based content management systems to manage websites, blogs, and other material on a website. However, Google still has a very challenging time indexing and understanding content from dynamic JavaScript-based pages.
The real reason for this is that it’s actually just too expensive for Google to process these pages. Meaning, they prefer processing, analyzing, and indexing straight HTML. Unless you have extremely high authority or have a page that’s already weighted or worth a lot—Google and other search engines might deprioritize your JavaScript-based page.
The best option is to stick with HTML. Use WordPress or another CMS that utilizes clean, basic, and old-school HTML. If you’re concerned about page load speed and this is why you’re using JavaScript-based systems—keep reading.
4. HTTPS and secure pages
HTTPS indicates that you have a secure website. It’s pretty easy to get a secure website these days. Cloudflare, as an example, provides you with a HTTPS domain almost entirely for free. And this is a heavily ranked factor in Google’s systems.
For Google and other search engines, these are more so related to whether the website is up-to-date and whether there are humans behind the domain or the website maintaining it. Think about it: if a website doesn’t have an HTTPS security certificate, it’s a great indicator that the website owner is letting “important things” on the domain expire.
5. Internal linking structure
An internal linking strategy usually fits more into the technical SEO bucket than not. And it’s a very critical part of the SaaS SEO strategy. Let’s say you have 1,000 pages on your domain. It’s important to show to Google and other search engines where to find them. In addition, it’s even more important to show search engines that you know certain pages have relationships with each other.
Breadcrumb navigations are one of the best ways to do this. Whether it’s linking together certain service pages. For example, let’s say you are a law firm SaaS product. Here’s how you might think about your internal linking structure of service pages:
- Solutions:
- Mass Tort
- Bankruptcy
- Civil Litigation
- Criminal Law
- Immigration Law
- Government Law
- General Practice
Each of these solutions pages serves a specific customer persona. However, you’re linking together all of your solutions into one primary solutions page. By doing this, it shows search engines that you understand the page intent needs of your visitor. In particular, this is a service page intent type or transitional intent.
The same thing can apply to blog posts and resource hubs. Creating breadcrumb navigation helps to ensure that you’re clustering topics together to help build authority.
The result, as a whole, is a very well-organized and authoritative website that would speak to every single topic related to your industry. This is simply a way for Google and other search engines to be able to serve quality websites in the SERPs.
6. Optimization for mobile devices
Page speed and optimization for mobile devices go hand-in-hand. In short, Google is now looking at User engagement as a way of determining the quality of a page or domain. If a User “bounces” or goes back to Google, it’s a negative point toward the page and the domain.
The more you can stack up these points across pages, the better the overall domain will perform. However, if your page doesn’t load quickly or has display issues on devices, this can be a deterrent for Users.
As a result, this could be drawing negative attention from Google’s processors that aim at ranking pages and domains. This is a type of “oops” that can easily be fixed. Using a cache system for content can ensure that you’re loading pages quickly. And browser testing your website on different browsers, devices, and international regions can ensure that you’re not missing something critical with your page display.
7. Cookie-consent banner
This is a new one! However, the rise of the cookie-consent banner has actually brought a number of new challenges to the table. Mostly, how this impacts analytics and reporting (attribution of marketing channels). And how these cookie consent banners are getting interacted with when it comes to first-time visitors.
Remember, Google is now looking at User engagement on pages. Think about it: how is your cookie-consent banner creating a positive User signal for Google? This can be tricky to solve. However, you should use unobtrusive and simple consent banners that don’t interrupt the reading experience.
Placing these banners at the top of pages (out of the viewport of content) can ensure that first-time visitors still engage with your page while having the option to accept or deny the cookie consent.
I’ve placed this into the technical bucket because it’s a more common and new issue that’s impacting the performance of SaaS websites.
Technical SaaS SEO Audits and More
Technical SaaS SEO audits can be worth investing in. Primarily, if they diagnose big issues like the ones listed above. And if they set a strategy for the website both in terms of its technical SEO needs and the on-page needs (usually in a 6 to 12-month strategy or “picture”).
If the service provider or SEO expert you’re going with tells you that those will be part of the document, it might be worth it to invest in a complete audit. These documents are usually around 10-15 pages in total. And highlight the most critical to least critical issues that could be affecting the performance of a SaaS website.
Performance should always be based on KPIs like rank, impressions, traffic, and free trial signups or demos scheduled. These are leading indicators for MQLs (marketing qualified leads) or SQLs (sales qualified leadS).
A SaaS company might spend anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 for this initial audit and strategy. However, it can be worth it to get a foundational look and understanding of a domain or website and ensure there’s nothing stopping you from growth.
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This article was fact-checked for the accuracy of the information it disclosed on:
October 19, 2024
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