SaaS SEO: the pages to build, the technical basics, and your first 90 days

SaaS SEO is ordinary search engine optimization applied to a company that sells software by subscription. Google's SEO Starter Guide describes SEO as being "about helping search engines understand your content, and helping users find your site and make a decision about whether they should visit your site through a search engine." The rules are the ones every site follows: Google's Search Essentials, which cover technical requirements, spam policies and key best practices.

What changes for a software company is the shape of the site:

• The product is behind a login. Google's technical requirements say: "If a page is made private, such as requiring a log-in to view it, Googlebot will not crawl it." Everything that can rank is what you publish outside the app: the marketing site, docs, templates and blog.
• People who do not know your name cannot search for it. The searches a new product can show up for are about the job to be done, a competitor plus the word "alternative", or whether a tool works with software the searcher already uses.
• The goal is signups, not visits. Google's own advice from May 2025 is to look past clicks: "Consider looking at various indicators of conversion on your site, be it sales, signups, a more engaged audience, or information lookups about your business."

Each of these page types answers a different kind of search. The examples are live pages from established software companies, fetched on October 5, 2026. They show the format only; we have no data on how much search traffic any of them gets.

Use-case pages. One page per job or team your product serves. Calendly has a page titled "Sales Scheduling Software Solution" at /solutions/sales. A good use-case page shows the workflow for that reader: the problem, the steps in your product, and the result. The risk is cloning one page across a list of industries with a single word swapped. Google's spam policies list "Creating substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy" as an example of doorway abuse.

Integration pages. One page per tool your product connects to. Zapier publishes pages for pairs of apps, for example one headed "Connect Google Sheets and Slack to power AI-driven automation", and Linear has a page titled "Slack Integration". Build these only for integrations that exist, and say what the integration does, how to set it up and what its limits are.

Alternative and comparison pages. For searches that name a competitor. Plausible has "Plausible vs Google Analytics 4 (GA4): What changed and why people are switching", and PostHog publishes "In-depth: PostHog vs Mixpanel" on its blog. You are an interested party, so the bar is accuracy. Google's guidance on writing reviews is aimed at reviewers, but two of its points fit any comparison page: "Explain what sets something apart from its competitors" and "Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research." Say where the competitor is the better choice, and date your claims.

Docs and help pages. Documentation answers "how do I do this" searches, and it has to be public, because pages behind a login are not crawled. Stripe keeps its docs on a subdomain (docs.stripe.com), while Supabase uses a folder (supabase.com/docs). Google's Starter Guide says of subdomains versus subdirectories: "From a business point of view, do whatever makes sense for your business."

Templates. If your product produces something reusable (a document, a board, a workflow), a public gallery can give each kind of template its own page. Notion's gallery at notion.com/templates links to category pages such as /templates/category/student-planner.

The table near the end of this post, just above the FAQ, puts the five types side by side.

Google's Search Essentials are blunt about how little is required: "There are actually very few technical things you need to do to a web page; most sites pass the technical requirements without even realizing it." A page is eligible to be indexed when Googlebot isn't blocked, the page returns an HTTP 200 status code, and it has indexable content.

Crawling and JavaScript. Google "primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled", and its link documentation says it can generally only crawl a link that is an HTML anchor element with an href attribute. Google renders JavaScript, but its JavaScript guide adds that "server-side or pre-rendering is still a great idea because it makes your website faster for users and crawlers, and not all bots can run JavaScript." For a single-page app, the same guide says to route with the History API ("don't use fragments to load different page content") and to return meaningful status codes, "like a 404 for a page that could not be found or a 401 code for pages behind a login."

Keeping the wrong pages out. A robots.txt file "is not a mechanism for keeping a web page out of Google." Google says to use noindex or password protection instead, and noindex only works if the crawler can reach the page: "the page or resource must not be blocked by a robots.txt file". Check staging and demo environments too. Google's canonicalization page lists "the demo version of the site is accidentally left accessible to crawlers" as one cause of duplicate content.

Sitemaps. Google says a site of "about 500 pages or fewer" that is comprehensively linked internally might not need one, but it lists "Your site is new and has few external links to it" as a reason you might, and adds that "in most cases, your site will benefit from having a sitemap." You can submit it in Search Console, which Google's Search Console Help describes as "a free service offered by Google".

Canonical URLs. When the same content is reachable at several URLs (tracking parameters, or both orders of an app pair on an integration page), Google picks one to show. You can state a preference with redirects, rel="canonical" annotations and sitemap inclusion, in that order of strength, but "indicating a canonical preference is a hint, not a rule." A live example: on October 5, 2026, Zapier's URL for Slack plus Google Sheets returned a 301 redirect to its Google Sheets plus Slack URL, and that page named itself in its canonical link.

Structured data. Google supports SoftwareApplication markup, including the WebApplication subtype. The required properties are a name, an offer price (set to 0 if the app is free) and a rating or review, and Google says the required properties must be included for content to be eligible for display as a rich result. A new product with no rating or review to mark up does not meet that requirement. Do not invent one: the structured data guidelines say "Don't mark up irrelevant or misleading content, such as fake reviews".

What you can skip. The Starter Guide says "Google Search doesn't use the keywords meta tag" and that "there's no magical word count target, minimum or maximum". Google's crawl budget guide, which now sits in its crawling infrastructure documentation, says in its introduction: "If your site doesn't have a large number of pages that change rapidly, or if your pages seem to be crawled the same day that they are published, you don't need to read this guide."

Integration, comparison and template pages can be built from a template plus data, sometimes with AI help. Google's policies are about the result, not the method. Its guidance on generative AI says it "can be particularly useful when researching a topic, and to add structure to original content." The line it draws is value to the reader.

Scaled content abuse is "when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users." Google's first example is "Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users". The policy applies "no matter how it's created", so filler written by hand counts too.

A practical check for each templated page: would it still be worth publishing if it were the only one? An integration page with real setup steps, screenshots and limits passes. A page that only swaps an app name into a stock paragraph does not, and for pages like that the scaled content policy is direct: "If you're hosting such content on your site, exclude it from Search."

If you draft with AI, Google's guidance says "It is critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing." Sites that violate the spam policies "may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all."

Google "uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages and to find new pages to crawl", and one of the key best practices in its Search Essentials is simply: "Tell people about your site. Be active in communities where you can tell like-minded people about your services and products that you mention on your site."

What the spam policies rule out is links created mainly to manipulate rankings. The examples most relevant to a software company:

• "Buying or selling links for ranking purposes", which includes "Exchanging goods or services for links". In our reading, a free plan upgrade in return for a link fits that wording.
• "Keyword-rich, hidden, or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites". If your product places a "Powered by" link on customers' pages, our reading is to keep it a plain brand link or mark it nofollow.
• "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links". Relevant directories are a different matter, and our post on directory backlinks covers how to tell them apart.

For a first burst of attention, launching on Show HN puts the product in front of readers directly, though it has its own rules. VibeLaunch, which publishes this post, works on one narrow part of this picture: directory listings.

The Google documentation we read gives no single number. The first two items below are its documented statements as of October 5, 2026. The third is an older statement that we can quote only from a trade publication's report.

• Changes to a page: "Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months. In general, you likely want to wait a few weeks to assess whether your work had beneficial effects in Google Search results." (SEO Starter Guide)
• Getting a new or updated page crawled: "Crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks." Requesting a crawl "does not guarantee that inclusion in search results will happen instantly or even at all."
• A whole SEO effort: Search Engine Roundtable reported on February 16, 2017 that Google's Maile Ohye, in a Google video on how to hire an SEO, said: "in most cases, SEOs need four months to a year to help your business first implement improvements and then see potential benefit." That wording comes from Search Engine Roundtable's report, not from a Google page. We could not load the video itself today, and the sentence is not in the current text of Google's "Do you need an SEO?" page.

Our reading: plan in quarters, not weeks. The first 90 days are for building pages that can rank; judging whether they do comes after.

Google's guidance for site owners is that the work stays the same: "The best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search (such as AI Overviews and AI Mode). There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary."

The same page says that to appear as a supporting link, "a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet".

Trying to game the answers is covered by the spam policies, whose definition of spam includes "attempting to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search." This covers Google only; this post makes no claims about how other AI assistants choose their sources.

The order below is our suggestion, built from the Google documentation above. The day ranges are a planning device, not something Google publishes.

Days 1 to 30: make the site indexable.

1. Verify the site in Search Console, and search Google for site:yourdomain.com to see what is already in the index.
2. Check that marketing pages deliver their content in the HTML response or are pre-rendered, and that every page you want indexed returns a 200 status code.
3. Put staging, demo and preview environments behind a password or noindex.
4. Submit a sitemap, and give each page its own title and meta description.

Days 31 to 60: build the pages closest to a decision.

1. Write one use-case page for each job your current customers really use the product for.
2. Write comparison or alternative pages for the competitors that prospects bring up in sales calls and support chats.
3. Publish an integration page for each integration that exists.
4. Open your docs to the public and link to them from the main site.

Days 61 to 90: tell people, then measure.

1. Follow Google's "Tell people about your site" advice: relevant communities, relevant directories, and people who write about your category.
2. Open the Search Console Performance report, which shows "breakdowns by queries, pages, and countries". Find queries where your pages appear but get few clicks, and improve those pages.
3. Wait before you judge. Google suggests "a few weeks" to assess a change.

At day 90 the aim is a site Google can crawl, a first set of pages aimed at real searches, and whatever early impression data Search Console shows. Google's technical requirements page says "indexing isn't guaranteed", and signups from search come later, if the pages earn them.

What we could not verify. The Google documentation we read gives no figure for how long a new site takes to rank, no weights for any page type or link, and no threshold at which templated pages become scaled content abuse. We could not load Google's 2017 video on hiring an SEO, so the "four months to a year" line is quoted from Search Engine Roundtable's report of February 16, 2017 rather than from the video. We have no traffic or signup data for the example pages, and the search patterns in the table below are illustrations, not measured query data. We did not cover Bing or AI assistants outside Google.

How this post was put together. We did not run ranking experiments, and this post contains no statistics of our own. On October 5, 2026 we read Google's Search Central documentation, one Search Central blog post, one Search Console Help page, Google's crawl budget guide and one Search Engine Roundtable report, and fetched the example pages named above to confirm their titles and URLs. The source for every rule quoted here is in the list below.