That is where most SaaS SEO efforts wobble. You might rank for a handful of keywords, publish plenty of content, and still end up with leads that do not match your Ideal Customer Profile, or traffic that never converts because it lands on pages that are not built for intent.
The good news is you can audit this properly. You just need to look at SEO as a full acquisition and conversion system, not a content production line.
Why this matters right now for UK SaaS
The UK market is not short on SaaS demand. Official UK data shows high adoption of cloud based computing systems and applications (69%) and specialised software (61%) among UK firms (based on 2023 data analysed by the ONS). That is a strong signal that your buyers are already comfortable researching, trialling, and purchasing software solutions.
At the same time, you are often invisible during a big chunk of the buying journey if your SEO is not aligned with how people actually decide. A 2025 UK and Ireland B2B buyer study (with 6sense) reports buyers control 57% of their journey before any vendor contact. Gartner also found that 61% of B2B buyers prefer a rep free buying experience.
So your SEO audit has to do more than “improve rankings”. It needs to make sure you show up early, match what the buyer is trying to achieve, and move them towards a demo with the right amount of trust and friction.
What you are really auditing in SaaS SEO
A useful SaaS audit connects 3 layers:
- ICP alignment
Who you want, who you are attracting, and whether your site speaks their language. - Intent mapping
What people are searching at each stage, and whether you have the right pages to meet that intent. - Demo funnel performance
What happens after the click, including landing page relevance, internal journeys, and conversion tracking into pipeline.
This is also why a proper audit is rarely owned by one person. You normally need marketing, product, and sales operations pulling in the same direction.
If you want a clear overview of how Totally Digital approaches joined up organic growth, start here.
Step 1: Audit ICP alignment so you stop attracting the wrong leads
ICP alignment sounds like a positioning exercise, but in SEO it becomes very practical, very quickly.
If your ICP is, for example, UK based finance teams at mid market manufacturers, but your site mainly ranks for generic “free tool” keywords, you are going to fill your pipeline with the wrong people and then blame SEO for “low quality leads”.
Your audit goal is to prove, with evidence, whether your organic presence matches your ICP.
Check what your existing organic traffic is really made of
Start with 3 quick cuts:
- Which landing pages drive the most organic sessions
- Which landing pages drive demo requests, trials, or sales conversations
- Which queries drive impressions and clicks to your highest value pages
This is where the GA4 and Search Console combination becomes non negotiable. It helps you spot gaps like “high impressions but poor engagement” and “high traffic but no pipeline.”
Audit your messaging against your ICP’s job, not your features
SaaS sites love leading with features. ICPs rarely search for features.
In your audit, pick your top 2 ICP segments and answer:
- What job are they trying to get done
- What risk are they trying to reduce
- What internal metric do they own
- What would make them look good in a board meeting
Then compare that to your page language.
If your demo page, product pages, and pillar pages do not speak to those pressures clearly, you will feel it in conversion rate and lead quality.
This is also where UX and conversion optimisation matters. There is little point driving more traffic if your key journeys are not built to convert.
Check proof, trust, and UK specific credibility
For UK B2B SaaS, trust signals often do more work than another paragraph of copy.
Audit whether you have:
- Case studies with outcomes (ideally tied to measurable value in GBP)
- Clear security and compliance content if relevant (especially for finance, healthcare, data)
- Implementation detail: timelines, onboarding, support model
- Transparent pricing posture (even if you do “pricing on request”)
If you are missing credible proof near your demo CTAs, that is usually a quick win.
Step 2: Intent mapping audit so every keyword has a purpose
Most SaaS sites have one of these problems:
- They target high volume top of funnel terms, but do not build paths to demo.
- They target bottom funnel terms, but have no topical authority to rank.
- They publish content, but the content does not match the intent behind the SERP.
Intent mapping is where you fix that.
Build an intent map that matches how SaaS is actually bought
A simple, useful intent map for SaaS usually looks like this:
Problem aware intent
People trying to name the issue and understand options.
Solution aware intent
People comparing solution categories and approaches.
Vendor evaluation intent
People comparing platforms, looking for alternatives, reviewing integrations, checking pricing.
Purchase intent
People ready to take action: demo, trial, contact sales, implementation.
Now audit your content and landing pages against this map.
You are looking for two things:
- Coverage: do you have pages for each stage
- Connection: do those pages link logically towards the demo journey
Audit your page types, not just your blog posts
SaaS SEO is not only blog content. Your audit should include:
Core pages
Home, product, features, use cases, industries, integrations, pricing, security.
Comparison pages
“Your brand vs competitor”, “alternatives”, “best software for”.
Use case pages
Built around outcomes and workflows, not feature lists.
Integration pages
Especially important if your product sits in a stack.
Documentation and help content
Can drive high intent traffic if structured well, but can also create index bloat if unmanaged.
If you do not have dedicated pages for comparison and alternatives, you are often leaving money on the table, because those searches are frequently close to purchase.
Validate intent by looking at what Google is actually ranking
Do not guess intent. Check the SERP.
For each target theme, review:
- Are the top results guides, product pages, category pages, or templates
- Are there strong “best” and “alternatives” modifiers
- Are the results UK specific or global
- Are there review sites dominating, meaning you may need a different angle
Then align your page format to what the SERP rewards, while still being genuinely helpful.
If you need a strong baseline for content and intent auditing, this is a good reference.
Check internal linking like you mean it
Internal linking is where you “program” user journeys.
In your audit, you want clean paths like:
Problem guide page
links to solution category page
links to use case page
links to demo page
If you cannot trace a simple journey from your highest traffic pages to your key conversion pages, that is a structural issue, not a content issue.
This is also where crawl budget and indexation control matters, particularly if you have docs, templates, tags, or parameter driven pages. Use this as a technical companion.
Step 3: Demo funnel audit so organic traffic becomes pipeline
This is the point where many SEO audits stop too early.
In SaaS, ranking is not the finish line. The finish line is qualified demos and revenue.
So your audit needs to treat the demo funnel like a product.
Audit the landing experience for message match
For your top organic landing pages that should drive demos, check:
- Is the headline aligned with the query intent
- Does the page explain who it is for within 10 seconds
- Is the primary CTA clear and consistent
- Do you show proof close to the CTA
- Does the page load fast and feel stable
If performance is an issue, that can drag down both conversions and rankings. This guide is a practical reference for diagnosing speed issues.
Audit friction in the demo request process
Your demo flow should feel like a small commitment, not a loan application.
Review:
- Form length and required fields
- Whether you ask for phone numbers too early
- Whether the calendar experience works well on mobile
- Whether the thank you page offers the next best action
Remember, many buyers want to self educate before speaking to sales. That preference shows up in multiple studies, including Gartner’s rep free buying stat.
A practical approach is to offer “demo” and “see it in action” options, plus supporting assets like product tours, short videos, or an implementation overview.
Audit conversion tracking into revenue, not just form fills
This is where most SaaS measurement falls apart.
Your audit should confirm:
- Demo submissions are tracked as key events in GA4
- You can segment conversions by landing page and query theme
- CRM attribution is connected, at least at source and medium level
- You can estimate pipeline value per organic landing page in GBP
If you are spending £5,000 a month on content and SEO activity, but you cannot tie organic to pipeline, you will always struggle to defend the budget.
The technical layer you cannot ignore in SaaS
Even though this article focuses on ICP, intent and funnel, you still need technical foundations. SaaS sites often introduce complexity in a few common ways:
- JavaScript heavy front ends that render slowly for crawlers
- Subdomains for app, docs, support, and marketing site
- International versions, even if most revenue is UK based
- Programmatic pages for integrations, templates, or directories
A good technical auditwill cover crawlability, indexation, speed, and site structure with a prioritised fix list.
A simple 30 day SaaS SEO audit plan you can actually run
Week 1: ICP and baseline
- Pull top organic landing pages, conversions, and query themes
- Define your top 2 ICP segments and their outcomes
- Identify the biggest mismatch between traffic and pipeline
Week 2: Intent mapping
- Build an intent map across problem, solution, evaluation, purchase
- Audit existing pages and spot missing page types
- Create a priority list of pages that should exist to support demos
Week 3: Demo funnel fixes
- Improve message match on key landing pages
- Reduce form friction and tighten CTAs
- Add proof where it matters, close to conversion points
Week 4: Measurement
- Fix tracking, events, and attribution
- Build a simple reporting view that ties organic landing pages to demo volume and pipeline value in GBP
- Set monitoring so you can measure improvement month on month
If you want a broader audit structure to keep you honest across technical, content, and links, use this checklist as a backbone.
Where Totally Digital fits if you want this done properly
If you want to run a SaaS SEO audit that actually connects search visibility to qualified demos and revenue, you need strategy, technical SEO, content direction, UX, and analytics working together. That joined up approach is exactly how Totally Digital positions its organic and audit work.
If you want, share your homepage URL and your main demo URL, and I will outline a practical ICP and intent map structure you can apply to your page architecture straight away.
If you’re tired of traffic that doesn’t convert, Totally Digital is here to help. Start with technical seo and a detailed seo audit to fix performance issues, indexing problems, and lost visibility. Next, scale sustainably with organic marketing and accelerate results with targeted paid ads. Get in touch today and we’ll show you where the quickest wins are.