SaaS SEO checklist [Free download]
An interactive checklist that turns SEO best practices into clear, actionable steps.
Available in Google Sheets & Microsoft Excel
SEO can feel overwhelming for SaaS businesses, with so many moving parts to manage.
That’s why I created this free SaaS SEO checklist — an actionable, step-by-step guide that shows you exactly what to do, and in what order, to drive results.
The checklist is fully interactive, so you can track your progress and stay focused on the actions that matter most.
Whether you’re building your first strategy or refining an existing one, this tool gives you a practical path to SEO success.
What does the SaaS SEO checklist include? 📋
This checklist gives you a clear, actionable roadmap to grow organic traffic, leads, and recurring revenue for your SaaS business.
It’s built from my own experience of scaling a SaaS product to 18 million visitors and 23,000 paying subscribers — so every item on the list has been tested and delivered results in the real world.
I recommend using this checklist alongside my in-depth SaaS SEO strategy guide, which explains the thinking and examples behind each step.
Each checklist point has:
The checklist is divided into four core stages of SEO growth:
Technical SEO
Before you can rank, your SaaS website needs a solid technical foundation.
Technical SEO ensures your site is fast, crawlable, secure, and structured in a way that both users and search engines understand.
For SaaS companies, this is especially important because you’re often competing against established players, and even small technical issues can block growth.
What’s included:
- Site performance – choose a fast CMS/hosting stack, implement caching, optimise images, fix Core Web Vitals.
- Crawlability & indexing – configure robots.txt, submit XML sitemaps, use canonical/noindex tags correctly, fix crawl errors.
- Mobile optimisation – responsive layouts, mobile speed, usability testing.
- Site architecture & linking – clean URL hierarchy, shallow click depth, internal linking that passes authority to key feature pages.
- Security – SSL, HTTPS redirects, secure headers, 2FA, regular updates and backups.
Structured data & enhancements – schema markup for products, FAQs, HowTo guides, organisation details, hreflang if multilingual.
Keyword Research
SEO fails without targeting the right terms.
Keyword research is about identifying what your potential customers are searching for — not just broad “traffic” terms, but the specific queries that reveal their problems, comparisons, and buying intent.
In SaaS, this means going beyond generic keywords and focusing on terms that map directly to your product features and customer pain points.
What’s included:
- Define goals & audience – decide if you’re optimising for traffic, free trials, demos, or retention; build SaaS buyer personas.
- Brainstorm seed topics – pull from product features, customer problems, competitor positioning.
- Expand your keyword list – use SEO tools to grow beyond your initial ideas.
- Group by search intent – awareness (educational), consideration (comparisons), decision (product-specific).
- Prioritise & roadmap – assign keywords to content formats (guides, case studies, product pages) and build a publishing schedule.
Content Creation
Content is the core element that turns SEO from theory into results
It turns keyword opportunities into traffic and sign-ups.
For SaaS, content has to do more than attract visitors — it needs to educate, build trust, and nudge readers towards trials and demos.
This section of the checklist provides a clear plan for building out a high-converting library of content for your site.
What’s included:
- Content planning & production – editorial calendar, detailed briefs, SME contributions, consistent cadence.
- On-page SEO optimisation – keyword-driven titles, H1s, metas, clean URLs, schema, internal/external linking.
- Pillar & cluster content – long-form guides supported by related posts to build topical authority.
- Refreshing & optimisation – updating old content, fixing broken links, adding new product features, re-optimising CTAs.
- Conversion focus – adding subtle and direct CTAs, guiding readers through awareness → sign-up.
Link Building
Links to your site remain one of the strongest ranking signals for both Google and AI search tools like Chat GPT.
For SaaS businesses, building links is about authority and relevance — not building thousands of low-quality links with spammy tactics
Effective link building gets you coverage on respected publications, and earns natural backlinks that will drive domain authority and traffic upwards.
What’s included:
- Competitor backlink analysis – uncover which domains link to your competitors but not you.
- Guest posting strategy – selective contributions to authoritative, relevant sites.
- Linkable assets – original research, statistics pages, calculators, or templates that attract links over time.
- Digital PR campaigns – data-driven studies and outreach that earn coverage from journalists and industry sites.
- Safe & sustainable growth – focus on quality over quantity, avoid PBNs/spam tactics, monitor and disavow toxic links.
Authority building – growing Domain Authority/Rating steadily so Google sees your SaaS as a trusted resource.
How to Use the SaaS SEO Checklist
This checklist isn’t just something to skim through — it’s designed to be a working document that guides you through every stage of SaaS SEO.
The best way to get value from it is to treat it like a step-by-step action plan for your website.
Here’s how to make the most of it:
- Work through it stage by stage – Start with the foundations (Technical SEO) before moving into Keyword Research, Content Creation, and finally Link Building. Each stage builds on the last, so you’ll avoid wasting time creating content that can’t rank.
- Tick off actions as you go – Use the checklist actively. Each completed item gets you closer to a site that attracts and converts the right kind of traffic. If you’re using the Google Sheets version, the progress tracker will help you see how far you’ve come.
- Use the tips and testing steps – Don’t just complete the action — check that it’s been done correctly. The checklist includes implementation advice and tools you can use to verify results (e.g. Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, Screaming Frog).
- Share it with your team – SEO success in SaaS usually involves marketers, developers, and product teams. Share the checklist so each action is owned by the right person, and progress is transparent.
- Revisit regularly – SEO isn’t “set and forget.” Use this checklist as a recurring audit tool every quarter to make sure your site is still performing at its best, and update it as your SaaS product grows.
By the end, you’ll have more than just a website that looks good — you’ll have a SaaS site that’s technically sound, built around the right keywords, fuelled by high-quality content, and trusted by search engines through authoritative links.
Ultimately this will lead to more traffic, quality leads, signups for your product and revenue for your business.
LinkQuest Founder
“I help businesses to grow traffic, sales and revenue through SEO and content marketing – after growing my own SaaS business to 18 million visitors and £1 million revenue.”