Nail the Organic Fundamentals
Most SaaS marketers know Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) needs to be a crucial component of their marketing mix. In fact, the majority are actively investing in it. But how do make sure you’re putting your efforts and resources in the right places?
That’s a great question. Many SaaS businesses focus heavily on the content distribution side of SEO strategy. They’ll have a team pumping out blog after blog like a sweatshop and meticulously studying keyword rankings. While there’s nothing wrong with this approach, there is if it’s at the expense of the technical component.
Even if your content is flawless from a keyword optimisation and quality perspective, if your website is plagued by technical issues, there will always be a ceiling to the results you can achieve.
Luckily, with our handy SaaS Technical SEO Checklist, you can give yourself the highest opportunity of achieving organic success. And ensure you aren’t missing any easy baseline points that stop your content from shining.
With our simple 5-step process under your wing, you’ll have the highest chance of soaring up the rankings and achieving what every marketer wants: ROI.
The 5-Step SaaS Technical SEO Checklist
So you’re deciding to funnel resources into technical SEO but aren’t well-versed in this arena. Or don’t have an SEO expert on your marketing team. Where do you start?
Our 5-Step technical SEO Checklist is the holy grail you can look to for guidance. Trust us – we have the SaaS SEO expertise to back it up! Let’s get into it.
1. Identify issues with an SEO Audit
The number #1 step in nailing your technical SEO is back to the basics: do an SEO audit. The purpose of an audit is to identify any outstanding technical issues plaguing your site health and find opportunities to optimise your website.
TEMPLATES
We’d recommend using a template to structure your audit. Whether’s it’s by making a copy of an existing template or building one of your own to suit your unique purposes. There’s a bunch of helpful resources for this on the web that will tell you exactly what you need to cover.
An example is this exhaustive SEO Audit Template offered by Backlinko and this free, downloadable SEO audit spreadsheet by Moz. These are quick and easy audit templates that will ensure you don’t miss anything important. Follow them and you’re set up for success.
TOOLS
Once you’ve got a checklist or framework to work off, it’s time to line up your tools. You could probably scramble something together without help, but if you have the budget, we’d highly recommend investing in SEO tools to do an effective audit.
Some of the handy ones we use in-house are Ahrefs & Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog is a “fast and advanced SEO site audit tool” that crawls your entire website, highlighting potential SEO problems for further investigation.
As they say on their website, Screaming Frog “gathers key onsite data to allow SEOs to make informed decisions.” Examples of things it picks up on are broken links, duplicate content and missing page titles + metadata.
Ahrefs, on the other hand, is an all-in-one SEO tool that allows you to uncover your website’s technical and on-page SEO issues like Screaming Frog but can also help you cross-reference other SEO metrics like organic traffic and backlinks alongside technical site health.
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
Before we move on from tools, it’s crucial that we cover Google Search Console: arguably the most important technical SEO aid.
It’s our agency’s go-to for understanding Google Search performance, surfacing any issues and identifying what we can do to improve search appearance & drive more relevant traffic.
It’s particularly helpful for picking up things like server errors, site load issues and security breeches like hacking and malware.
Because Google Search Console is a Google product, the data is always as reliable, accurate and up-to-date as possible.
From tools to Diagnosis
Now that you’ve got your head around the nifty templates and tools technical SEO experts use, it’s time. Do your audit, identify where your issues lie and then we can start improving all areas impacting your company’s technical site health with the steps below.
2. Optimise for accessibility
One of the components you need to nail and cover in your audit when it comes to technical SEO is accessibility. Think about this aspect as all the elements that go into making sure your website is accessible (both by users and search engines). After all, what’s the point of SaaS companies having a website if it’s not easy to reach?
Your audit will bring up any issues. Optimising for accessibility includes:
Robots.txt
This text file restricts search engine crawlers from accessing parts of your site. You need to ensure it’s optimised so that only the required parts of your website are accessible.
Robots meta tags
Robots meta tags tell search engines they can index a specific page and follow its links. You want to ensure they aren’t blocking any pages that should be indexed.
HTTP Status Codes
Search engines and users cannot access site pages if they have URLs with errors e.g. 404s. Make sure that no pages are coming up with errors (and fix the ones that are).
XML Site Map
Your site’s XML Sitemap acts as a roadmap for search engines, ensuring they can find all of your site’s pages easily. As a result, it’s very important and you must ensure it’s in optimal format.
Site Architecture
Your site architecture defines the overall scaffolding of your website, including its vertical depth (how many levels it has) and its horizontal breadth. Included is your URL structure – ensure yours are short and user-friendly, contain keywords, use subfolders and avoid excessive parameters.
Internal linking
Internal links go from one page on your website to a different page on the same domain. These are important for navigation, establishing hierarchy and helping spread link juice. Make sure you’re using at least 2-3 internal links in each of your blog posts and important service pages, and pay particular attention to CTAs.
HTTPs vs HTTP
Google prefers websites that use HTTPS rather than HTTP, as it’s more secure. If you’re not using HTTPS, you should change it now.
Site performance and speed
Speed is critical for users and search engine crawlers. Sites that load quickly are crawled more thoroughly and consistently than slower ones and have lower bounce rates. Make sure your website is optimised for page load speed.
Phew! Now that’s a meaty component you can tick off your list. Onto the next!
3. Optimise for indexability
Intertwined with accessibility is the next cab off the rank – your website’s indexability. This essentially refers to how many pages are indexed by search engines, and it’s a key component of technical SEO for SaaS.
Pages appearing in the search results
It’s important to determine how many of your site’s pages are being indexed by Google. Using tools like Screaming Frog, you can see how many pages are indexable. Then, by comparing the ratio of these pages to your total pages (the higher, the better), you’ll be able to deduce whether Google is effectively crawling your pages. If not, you’ll need to optimise.
Brand searches
A core part of optimising for indexability is brand-related. You need to check you’re appearing for your company name when you search for it in Google. Ideally you’ll be positioned first. If for some reason you are not, you need to put some work into diagnosing why you aren’t and uplifting your rankings.
Search engine penalties
This refers to penalties applied to the site for violating Google’s search engine algorithms. You want to make sure there are zero of these on the website.
4. Optimise on-page SEO
On-page SEO is a vital component of your overall SaaS SEO strategy and can have a measurable impact on your search rankings. Let’s dive into it’s key aspects.
Duplicate content
One of the easiest issues to detect regarding on-page SEO is duplicate content. A crawl will quickly pick up if you have any duplicate content on your site (often caused by multiple URLs sending to the same page), and from there, all you need to do is remove double-ups: easy!
Deadweight pages
Google prefers a website to prioritise quality over quantity: a lesser vol of high-value pages over an excessive amount of low-quality ones. Following this logic, having a bunch of ‘deadweight’ pages can have a detrimental effect on SEO. You want to make sure that there’s minimal if any, low-quality pages on your website to avoid a negative impact on your search engine rankings.
Content length
Content length is another area you should pay attention to. Key pages should have at least 800-1,000 words, and ideally over 1500 words. Audit your site and make sure this is the average. If not – it’s time to buff up those word counts!
Frequency
Content frequency is another contributor to an SEO-optimised website. You want make sure that you are publishing on the site regularly, as this is another aspect that goes into signalling to Google that you’re an authority. If you don’t have a regular cadence for your content – set one up.
Mobile-friendliness
This aspect is exactly as it sounds – a measure of how friendly your website is to mobile. With Google introducing mobile-first indexing – this is supremely important to consider. You need to make sure every page on your website looks just as good, if not better, on a mobile screen. Breaks can be fatal!
Titles
Titles are another influential (and easy-to-optimise) aspect of your on-page SEO. A title tag is a small piece of HTML code that indicates the title of a page and appears in search results, social media posts and browser tabs. To ensure your title tags are optimised – you want to ensure your they are all between 50-60 characters, include keywords and align with the content of the page they are pointing to.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are seemingly small but also impactful element of on-page SEO. While it’s not necessarily a ranking factor, it affects the page’s click-through rate in the search engine results. Like titles, you need to have a meta description for every page that’s between 150-160 characters, contains keywords and aligns with the content on the page it’s pointing to.
Jump Links
While this isn’t a huge one, a way to increase your organic real-estate is called ‘Jump Links’. This is where Google crawls links to different sections and serves them as site links. To help increase organic performance and user experience, employ Jump Links within longer content.
Images
A site needs to provide image metadata so that search engines can understand what it is. Ensure all your images have descriptive file names and alt text, and use targeted keywords where possible.
Outlinks
Just like internal links, an important part of technical seo audits is making sure your site links to other high-quality sites. This signals to Google that research has gone into your content and if done in a relevant, logical ways – adds to the experience of the user.
H1 Tags
H1 tags are used to markup the page’s headline. Each page should have a single, unique headline that sums up the content on the page, uses keywords and is an optimal length.
5. Optimise off-page SEO
The final aspect we’ll cover in this Technical SEO guide for SaaS companies is off-page SEO. While this area is often underrated in SEO discussions, any expert SaaS marketer will know that off-page factors can be as important as on-page ones. Let’s run through each of the core aspects.
Organic Growth
Yes, organic growth and website traffic can impact the presence of technical SEO issues. How? Popularity is a signal to Google of potential ‘ongoing success’ and it looks favourably on this. If not already in place, a structured, well-planned, and well-executed SEO program is recommended to achieve sustainable organic growth.
Competitor Analysis
While focusing on your website is a crucial part of technical SEO, It’s important not to fall into a bubble and get blinders on. At every turn, you should remember exactly where your website sits in the broader competitive landscape. Part of this is regularly researching competitor keywords, backlinks, trending content and more – gauging the average and identifying areas for improvement.
Backlink Profile
Your site’s quality is largely determined by the quality of the sites linking to it. Thus, it is extremely important to analyze the backlink profile of your site and identify opportunities for improvement. Here we’d suggest: looking at the number of websites pointing to yours, the authority of these websites, their nofollow status, their relevance (do you have an audience crossover?) and the integration of the anchor text. If any of the areas above need work, we’d suggest you get improving!
Authority
A combination of factors determines a site’s authority (e.g., the quality and quantity of its backlinks, its popularity, its trustworthiness, etc.). This is represented by two important metrics: Page Authority and Domain Authority. Are you sitting on the lower end of the spectrum for either metric? Refer to the backlink profile step above. If your Domain Authority, in particular, isn’t strong – you’re putting yourself at a serious disadvantage regarding the impact of your SEO efforts.
It’s time to level up your technical SEO
5 steps and we’re finally at the end of our Technical SEO voyage! Hopefully, you’ll keep these in the back of your mind whenever you’re working on your own SaaS SEO strategy. Do some necessary R&R on these areas and you’ll set your SaaS website up for killer search performance and long-term success.
Need help with technical SEO for SaaS?
You’re in luck! Digital Rhinos is an an expert SaaS SEO agency with experience helping 100s of SaaS businesses just like yours achieve the search results they’re looking for. We have a whole team of SEO experts ready to support you and help you navigate the complexities of the SEO world. In no time, you’ll boost organic traffic, climb up the search engine rankings and nail your link-building efforts.
Sound like the type of help you need? Get in touch today to organise a quick 15-minute call where we’ll see whether we’re a good fit to help you.
