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 that quietly decide whether a crawler ever sees your pricing.
Straight answer
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 actually lands on get built once and never touched again.
Where the money usually goes
- Top of funnel posts chosen because the volume looked good
- A monthly article quota with no view on what it is meant to sell
- Sessions and signups reported as if the SEO produced them
- A framework that ships pricing and features only after JavaScript
- Feature pages left as a paragraph under a demo form
Where the pipeline actually comes from
- Feature, integration and use case pages that exist and are indexed
- Comparison and alternative pages built properly rather than spun
- Docs that live where they help the marketing site rather than compete
- Templates that render the content a crawler needs before it leaves
- Internal links that reach the money pages from somewhere with authority
Said plainly
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 actually 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
The pages that name what your product does, what it connects to, and the job it gets done. On most SaaS sites these are thin or missing while the blog gets the attention. They convert a buyer who arrives late in a long cycle, which is most of them.
Comparison and alternative pages
"X vs Y" and "alternative to X" are where buyers with budget go. They are also where SaaS sites get sloppy: near duplicate templates, competitor claims that age badly, and intent split so your own pages compete. Built properly they are the highest value asset you own.
Programmatic architecture
Templated pages at scale without generating thin ones. The rule for what is allowed to exist, the data behind each page, the crawl path, and the indexation controls that stop thousands of near empty variants going live. We have built a server rendered search tool on this pattern for a 33k a month 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 rather than bolting on prerendering that rots.
Docs, subdomains and subfolders
Where docs, changelog, help centre and blog live, and what that costs you. Usually a platform constraint dressed up as an SEO decision. We tell you which it is, and if the answer is a move, treat it as a migration with 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 rather than invoice 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 actually 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
The assumption was that the target page needed links. Page one competitors were far weaker on authority, so links were not the constraint. A canonical pointed at a redirect, commercial and informational intent were fighting on the same term, and the copy was machine spun. Fixed on page, and a link budget was never spent.
Scale
A crawlable search tool on a 33k term
A geolocation search feature built server rendered so results exist for a crawler rather than appearing after 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
Content changes were not propagating. Missing URLs in the purge list, a meta deletion path with no hook, a dual URL form for location terms, and curated pages that query content rather than being archives, so no term based purge could reach them. Six pages stale for 14 to 24 hours matched origin immediately after.
Fit
Worth reading before you enquire.
This works well if
- You have a marketing site with real traffic and commercial pages that are not ranking
- Your blog performs and your feature and integration pages do not
- You want programmatic pages at scale and want the architecture right first
- Your marketing site shares a framework or a deployment with the app
- Your docs and marketing site are quietly competing and nobody has looked
- Someone handed you an audit months ago and nothing in it has shipped
Probably not a fit if
- You want one supplier covering SEO, paid media and content production too
- You need a named SaaS case study in your category. We do not have one
- You want guaranteed pipeline or a traffic forecast. Nobody can honestly give you either
- You want a monthly link quota, or links bought. We earn links, we do not buy them
- The product just launched with no traffic. Technical SEO is not your bottleneck yet
- You need high volume cheap content. We write, but not at that scale or price
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 a straight answer even if the answer is that you do not need us.
Within one working dayPrioritised plan
What is costing you rankings on the pages that actually 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 actually 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 get a straight answer 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 actually receives before it decides to leave, then fix the template rather than bolting prerendering on top 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 rather than 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 genuinely 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.