How to Run an SEO Audit for SaaS Sites, Step by Step

An SEO audit for a SaaS site is a structured check of whether the right pages can be found, whether they match what buyers search for, and what's stopping them from bringing in pipeline. The useful output isn't a long report with a health score. It's a short ordered list of fixes, each with an owner and an expected effect.

The order matters more than the number of checks. Most audit tools begin with whatever their crawler can detect, so they rank a missing image alt tag beside a noindex on your pricing page. Start with the problems that block everything else, then work outward toward refinements.

Step 1: Define what you are auditing for

Before opening a tool, list your 10 to 20 most valuable pages: pricing, top features, category pages, comparison pages, top integrations, and the blog posts that lead to demos. Say you run a 30-person contract management SaaS. Your list might include /pricing, /contract-management-software, /docusign-alternative and /integrations/salesforce.

Next, write down what's prompting the audit. Did traffic fall? Did a redesign just ship? Is new leadership asking what's going on? A traffic drop calls for a time-based investigation first, and a general check-up doesn't. Keep this list beside you, as every finding gets judged by whether it touches these pages.

Step 2: Check that Google can reach and index those pages

This comes first because nothing downstream matters if it fails. In Google Search Console, run each money page through URL Inspection and confirm that it's indexed, with the canonical you expect.

Then look across the site:

• Page indexing report: Read the reasons pages are excluded. Your important pages shouldn't appear under noindex, redirect or "Crawled - currently not indexed". Compare the total known URLs to your real page count as well.
• Manual actions and security issues: Takes seconds, and it would change everything.
• Robots.txt: Check that it isn't blocking important sections, or the scripts your pages need.
• Raw HTML: Fetch your money pages with curl and confirm that the main content is present. A client-rendered marketing site belongs near the top of your findings. See JavaScript SEO for React and Next.js.
• Sitemap: It should list only canonical URLs returning a 200.

SaaS products also tend to produce unexpected URLs, such as shared workspaces and filtered directories. If Google knows of far more URLs than you've published, read our crawl budget guide.

Step 3: Run a crawl and sort by template

Crawl the site with a tool such as Screaming Frog or Sitebulb. Now ignore the overall score and group the issues by page template. A SaaS site has few templates and many pages, so a single layout bug can be behind hundreds of warnings. That's good news, since you can fix it once.

Look for the things that do real damage:

• Broken internal links and redirect chains
• Wrong or missing canonicals
• Stray noindex tags
• Duplicate or empty title tags
• Money pages that are only reachable after many clicks, or have few internal links
• Orphan pages found in your sitemap but not through crawling

Treat a missing alt tag on one blog image as a note, not a finding. Check Core Web Vitals in Search Console, where the data comes from real users, and fix a template if it's clearly poor. Don't spend a sprint chasing a perfect lab score on one page.

Step 4: Check that money pages match search intent

This is where tool-based audits run out, and it's often where the largest gains are. For each money page, search its main phrase and compare. Is your page the same type as those ranking? If "contract management software" shows mainly listicles and category pages, and yours is a thin feature tour, no technical fix will help.

Then go through the Search Console Performance report and look for:

• High impressions and low clicks, which point to a weak title or the wrong intent. See what to fix when you get impressions but no clicks.
• Positions 5 to 15 on commercial phrases, the likely place for the fastest progress.
• Two of your pages alternating on one query, a sign of cannibalization.
• The wrong page ranking, such as an old blog post for a phrase that should go to your category page.

Read how search intent works for SaaS keywords if this part is unfamiliar.

Step 5: Look for commercial pages you don't have

An audit shouldn't only review what exists. List the buying patterns for your category, including alternatives, comparisons, use cases and integrations. Then mark which ones you've covered. Competitors' URL structures reveal a lot here. If three rivals have an /alternatives/ section and you don't, this may be worth more than every other finding combined. The method is set out in buyer-intent keywords for SaaS.

Step 6: Review the content you already have

Export your blog URLs with their clicks and impressions over a long period, then sort every page into four groups:

Group	Sign	Action
Keep	Brings relevant traffic or leads	Leave alone, and link to money pages
Refresh	Slipping, or out of date	Update it properly
Merge	Several posts on one question	Combine, then redirect
Remove	No traffic, no links, no purpose	Delete or noindex after checking

Also look at the quality of the writing itself. Do the pages show first-hand knowledge, or could any company have published them? Are facts about your product still right? E-E-A-T for SaaS content offers a way to think about this.

Step 7: Compare your links with what you actually need

Open the Links report in Search Console and one third-party tool. There are two questions to answer: do any links point at your money pages, and which relevant sites link to several competitors but not to you?

Don't spend time on spam scores unless you have a manual action or a known history of paid links. Our post on toxic backlinks explains why. If your important pages have few links, the quickest fix is often internal: link to them from the pages that have already earned backlinks.

Step 8: Check how AI answers describe you

Most audit checklists stop before this, though your buyers don't. Take 15 to 20 prompts your buyers would ask, and run them in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI features. Record whether you appear, how you're described, and what's cited. Then confirm that your robots.txt and firewall allow the crawlers you want, as described in our ChatGPT SEO guide.

Errors here are often the quickest to fix. If an answer quotes an old price, find the page that says so and correct it.

Step 9: Turn findings into a short ordered list

This is the step that decides whether an audit achieves anything. Limit the list to what your team can actually ship in the next quarter, and rate each item:

• Impact: Does it touch a money page or a whole template?
• Effort: Is it an hour's work, or a sprint?
• Owner: Who will do it? Engineering, content or marketing?

Then order them. Blockers go first, regardless of effort. Next come template-level fixes, commercial page gaps, intent fixes, then refinements. Write developer tickets stating the URL, what's wrong, what should happen instead and how to check the result. A vague "improve site speed" will sit in a backlog forever.

Using the contract management SaaS as an example, a good final list might have eight items: fix a canonical bug on /integrations/*, server-render the pricing table, build three alternatives pages, merge four overlapping posts on contract approvals, and so on. A list like that gets shipped, and a 90-page PDF usually doesn't.

Run a light version every quarter, and a full version after any redesign or site migration. When reviewing the results, look at the pages you changed rather than at the site's total traffic, since the total moves for many reasons.

If you want an outside read on your site and a list your team can act on, book a call with Comppound.