SaaS and product led SEO
SaaS SEO where the person who finds the problem also ships the fix.
Most SaaS teams searching for an agency want the pages that sell to rank, not another blog quota. We work on software marketing sites. Programmatic feature and integration pages, docs that either feed the site or fight it, and the rendering decisions, easy to overlook, that decide whether a crawler ever sees your pricing.
Vanity metrics
Most SaaS SEO spends the budget where the metric looks good.
The blog gets the money because it produces a number that rises. The feature, integration and use case pages a buyer with a budget lands on get built once and never touched again.
Where the money usually goes
- Top of funnel posts picked for volume, on a quota
- Sessions and signups claimed as SEO results
- Pricing and features that exist only after JavaScript
- Feature pages left as a paragraph under a demo form
Where the pipeline comes from
- Indexed feature, integration and use case pages
- Comparison and alternative pages with no spun copy
- Templates that render content before a crawler leaves
- Money pages linked from pages with authority
Ask who implements it
The people who diagnose the problem write the fix, so nothing gets lost in a handover between a strategist and a developer. If a proposal you have received separates the audit from the build, ask who implements it, and what happens when the recommendation turns out to be inconvenient for the product team.
Scope
What SaaS SEO needs.
SaaS search is low volume and high value. A term with 90 searches a month can be worth more than a blog post with 9,000, and most software sites are optimised for the wrong one of those.
Feature and integration pages
- What the product does, and what it connects to
- Thin or missing on most SaaS sites
- Convert most buyers, who arrive late in a long cycle
Comparison and alternative pages
- "X vs Y" is where buyers with budget go
- Near duplicate templates and claims that age badly
- Split intent leaves your own pages competing
- Built properly, the highest value asset you own
Programmatic architecture
- Templated pages at scale, none of them thin
- Rules for what may exist, and the crawl path
- Indexation controls against near empty variants
- The pattern behind our search tool on a 33k term
Rendering on app adjacent sites
Marketing sites built in the product framework often ship content that only exists after JavaScript runs. We check what a crawler receives before it decides to leave, then fix the template, because bolted-on prerendering rots.
Docs, subdomains and subfolders
- Where docs, changelog, help centre and blog live
- Usually a platform constraint dressed up as SEO
- A move gets a redirect map and a parity check
Indexation and internal linking
Which pages are eligible, which cannibalise each other, and whether the commercial pages are linked from anywhere with authority. On one site cutting a 25 link block down to 5 chosen links did more than any single one of them had.
Boundaries
What we do not do, before you ask.
We are technical SEO first. Everything else we touch, we touch because it affects whether the technical work pays off.
Not demand generation
We do not build lifecycle campaigns, nurture sequences or product led onboarding flows. If qualified traffic arrives and does not convert to a trial, that sits downstream of us and we will say so instead of invoicing for it.
Not paid media
No Google Ads, no LinkedIn, no bid management. We will happily read your paid search query data, because it is the best commercial intent dataset most SaaS companies own, but we are not running the account.
Not bought links
We build links by earning them, through digital PR and manual outreach. We audit link quality and make disavow calls. We do not buy links and we do not use PBNs.
Evidence
What we can show you.
These are from a high traffic directory site and its theme, not from a SaaS company. We show them because the problems are the same shape, not because we are claiming your vertical.
Diagnosis
Zero keywords on a strong domain
- Page one competitors far weaker on authority
- A canonical to a redirect, and machine spun copy
- Commercial and informational intent on one term
- Fixed on page, no link budget spent
Scale
A crawlable search tool on a 33k term
A geolocation search feature built server rendered so a crawler sees results without running JavaScript. The geocoding layer maintains itself, so adding locations needs no code change. That is the same pattern a SaaS site needs for programmatic pages that are not thin.
Infrastructure
Four causes behind one stale cache
- Missing URLs and an unhooked meta deletion path
- A dual URL form for location terms
- Curated query pages no term purge could reach
- Six pages 14 to 24 hours stale now match origin
Fit
Before you enquire.
This works well if
- Commercial pages not ranking while the blog does
- Programmatic pages at scale, architecture first
- A marketing site sharing a framework with the app
- An audit handed over months ago, nothing shipped
Probably not a fit if
- A named SaaS case study, which we do not have
- Guaranteed pipeline or a traffic forecast
- Just launched, with no traffic yet
- High volume cheap content, or bought links
How it runs
Diagnose, agree, build, verify.
Diagnosis
We look at the site, the docs, Search Console, the competitors ranking for your commercial terms, and what your own pages are doing to each other. Free, and you get our verdict even if it is that you do not need us.
Within one working dayPrioritised plan
What is costing you rankings on the pages that sell, in order, with the evidence and the risk attached. Including the items we think you should skip and why.
You approve before we startBuild and verify
We write it, deploy it and check it on the live site. Before and after evidence per change, and a rollback path tested in advance for anything that could touch the app or the marketing site.
Logged as it is spentCost
What it costs.
Technical SEO and strategy runs at £90 to £110 an hour. Development is £90 to £100. Mixed work is billed at a £95 blended rate. Minimum engagement is 4 hours.
Audit first
From £900
The technical audit, roughly 8 to 12 hours depending on size. If you want content and links assessed in the same pass, that is the broader audit instead.
Project
Scoped
A defined piece of work such as a comparison page architecture, a programmatic build, a docs migration or a rendering fix. Fixed scope and cost agreed in writing before anything starts.
Retained
Monthly
A set number of hours a month against a shared roadmap, for sites where the product and the marketing pages keep changing. Useful when releases keep outrunning the SEO work.
Time is logged as it is spent and the ledger is open to you, including anything scrapped or reverted. Full breakdown on the rates page.
FAQ
Questions clients ask
How is a SaaS engagement structured?
It opens with a diagnosis, not a retainer. We look at your marketing site, the docs, Search Console, and what your own pages are doing to each other, and you know where you stand before any money changes hands. If it turns into work, the scope and cost are agreed in writing first.
From there it is a defined project, a programmatic page build, a docs migration, a rendering fix, or a set number of hours a month against a shared roadmap. The people who diagnose the problem write the fix, so nothing falls into the gap between a strategist and a developer.
Do you have named SaaS case studies?
No, and we will not invent them. Our documented work is a high traffic directory site plus theme development and technical SEO on it.
What transfers is the problem shape. A directory is a large templated site with faceted pages, thin page risk, cache layers, schema at scale and internal linking that decides what ranks. That is structurally the same as a SaaS site with programmatic feature and integration pages, a docs subdomain, and a marketing site sitting next to the app. If you need a supplier who has shipped ten SaaS accounts in your exact category, we are not that. Say so early and neither of us wastes a call.
Our marketing site is built in the same framework as the product. Is that a problem?
Often, yes, and it is the most common SaaS technical issue we see. Content that only exists after JavaScript runs is content a crawler may never wait for. Pricing tables, feature grids and comparison tables are the usual casualties. We check what a crawler receives before it decides to leave, then fix the template itself and leave prerendering out of it.
Should our docs live on a subdomain or a subfolder?
It depends on who owns the deployment and how much you want the docs feeding the marketing site. A subfolder keeps one host and one Search Console property, which is usually better for SEO. A subdomain is often chosen because the docs platform cannot be reverse proxied cleanly, and that is a real engineering constraint, which is a different thing from an SEO failure. We will tell you what each costs and what it saves, then you decide. If the answer is to move it, that is a migration, so the redirect map and the parity check are part of the job.
Will building hundreds of programmatic pages get us penalised?
Not because they are templated. Templated pages get into trouble when the only thing that changes is a variable in the heading, when there is no real data behind them, and when nothing links to them except a sitemap.
The version that works has different content per page, a crawl path a person would plausibly follow, and a rule for which pages are allowed to exist. We built a server rendered geolocation search tool on a 33k a month term this way, with a geocoding layer that maintains itself so new locations need no code change. That is the model we would apply to feature, integration and use case pages.
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Tell us which page should be ranking.
Give us one commercial URL and the term you want it to win. We will tell you what is stopping it, whether it is a technical problem or a content one, and whether we are the right team for it.