Maximizing SEO for B2B SaaS: What pages should you index?

To maximize B2B SaaS SEO and improve traffic and visibility in search, you’ll want to ensure all your pages are indexed, right? It's quite the opposite. Believe it or not, there are pages you may not want showing up in Google. As you’ll soon see: sometimes, less is more.

In this blog post, we'll focus on B2B SaaS SEO and which pages will give you the biggest returns. We'll cover why some pages get indexed, and others don't, which pages you should index, and which pages you should remove.

So, let's dive right in! (Skip to a section using the links below.)

Why B2B SaaS SEO is so important

Optimizing your B2B web pages for search is incredibly important because it helps your target audience find your website more easily. People searching for something on Google usually look for answers, solutions, or information.

By optimizing your web pages with relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and other on-page elements, you increase the chances of your pages showing up in search results when people search for something related to your business. In addition, savvy B2B SaaS brands understand the importance of maximizing the value of their web pages by focusing on those most likely to attract, engage, and convert visitors. By doing this, they increase their chances of getting rewarded by Google with higher rankings, more traffic, and, ultimately, more revenue for their business.

On the opposite end of the indexing spectrum, you should also look at pages that aren't providing much for anyone searching for information on a search engine. An excellent place to start looking at pages to index/noindex would be running a site crawl to see what is showing up in search results. (Thanks to Google Search Console, you can also get an instant snapshot of the pages that are indexed/not indexed, along with a list of reasons why.)

Web pages you want Google to index for SEO

The pages a B2B SaaS business should index or no-index depends on the business's goals and strategy. However, here are some general guidelines that may help:

Homepage

The homepage is typically the most crucial page on your website, as it serves as a gateway to the rest of your site. Your website visitors arrive at your site with three distinct questions:

• Where am I?
• What can I do here?
• Why should I do it?

Your home page is much more than a simple first impression for visitors. A good homepage gives visitors an itinerary that shows what they can and should do on your site while providing clear answers to the questions above.

About page

The about page provides important information about your company, its history, and its values. It can help to establish trust and credibility with potential customers. The about page can be a single page listing the people involved in your company or a family of pages.

To optimize your about page, avoiding thin content and providing genuine value to searchers is important. Additionally, you should share a strong value proposition that sets your company apart from competitors and consider including additional information, such as job openings, ratings, awards, and accolades.

Products and services pages

These are the pages that describe your products and services, and they are typically the pages that potential customers will visit to learn more about what you offer.

Regarding searcher intent, there are four types of keywords: information queries, navigation queries,commercial queries, and transactional queries. Your product and service pages should satisfy the above home page criteria and each query type.

Blog

Blogging is an effective way to share information about your products or industry and boost your website's search engine ranking. However, the content lifecycle begins after publishing, and content decay can lead to a decline in organic traffic, rankings, and visibility.

To battle content decay, it's essential to continually monitor, update, and improve your content against competitors attempting to siphon your rankings and traffic away.

Case studies and testimonials

Case studies and supporting testimonials are a great way to demonstrate your B2B SaaS company's expertise in a particular industry or niche. They also serve as social proof, showing how your product has helped other customers achieve their goals. This can be especially powerful for B2B companies, where decision-making involves multiple stakeholders.

You can use case studies to help improve your website's SEO by providing fresh, relevant, and keyword-rich content. In addition, case studies are a great tool for lead generation, allowing you to capture contact information from potential customers interested in learning more about how your product or service can benefit them.

Knowledge base

In most cases, indexing a knowledge base makes it easily accessible and discoverable for visitors, providing answers to frequently asked questions and positioning your brand as an authority. Additionally, a well-organized and easily discoverable knowledge base can support self-service, saving time and resources for both the user and your company. 

However, there may be cases where you don't want to index certain content, such as confidential or sensitive information. Consider what type of information your knowledge base contains before deciding on indexing such pages.

Web pages you should noindex from Google

When it comes to determining which pages to noindex from Google, the answer lies in pages that provide little to no value or they fail to satisfy the intent of the searcher. It's important to realize that each of your web pages listed in Google is competing with external websites and other web pages on your site.

Confirmation pages

Pages that users see after completing a form or making a purchase typically do not contain valuable information for searchers or search engines, so they can be set to noindex to prevent them from cluttering up search results.

Internal search result pages

These pages are created when users search your website. Search result pages can be set to noindex to prevent them from appearing in search results and creating duplicate content issues. These internal search pages don't provide users with the appropriate context and typically fail to satisfy searcher intent.

Login pages

Pages that require a user to log in before accessing content typically do not contain valuable information for search engines. Navigational searchers who are looking for a specific URL may find what they're looking for with these login pages but that's about it. Login pages prompt searchers to immediately click the back button in their browser, increasing your bounce rates dramatically.

Legal and policy pages

While it's important to have these pages on your site, they generally don't need to be indexed because they're not useful for users searching for your product or service. The vast majority of searchers won't visit your site to visit these pages. These pages are often motivated to view these pages at decision points (i.e., I'm ready to convert, what's your privacy policy?).

Test pages or staging sites

These pages are used for testing and development purposes and can be set to "no-index" to prevent them from appearing in search results until your changes are posted and your web pages are "show ready." This is all about best practices and a disciplined approach. The last thing you want is an updated robots.txt file that blocks Googlebot, delisting key areas of your site.

Duplicate content

If a web page has similar content to another page on the same website or another website, search engines may not index it to avoid showing duplicate content in search results. You should either remove and redirect these pages, update the content to be unique to the page, or add a canonical URL to these pages.

Tag pages

These are common with CMS platforms like WordPress. These pages are nothing but tags on a page. These are low value pages that don't offer anything to searchers or to search engines. You'll want to deindex these pages to avoid issues with duplicate content, keyword density, or spam. An important caveat to this, you'll want to index these pages but allow Google to follow the links whether they lead. They'll be able to find their way around.

Tracking URLs

I think this goes without saying, but tracking URLs is useful to a single customer. There's no need for Google to index tracking URLs. This is yet another example of low-value content that isn't useful.

Your content should always satisfy searcher intent and provide value. If your content isn’t doing that, it may be time to make a change. Remember, if you're running a B2B SaaS company, you have an abundance of competitors. Delisting pages enables you to make a strong first impression.

Indexing the right pages is essential for SEO

In summary, not all of your web pages are created equal, and some may not belong in Google search. If you want to maximize the SEO traffic and visibility to your B2B SaaS business, you’ll want to maximize the value searchers receive from your web pages. Failure to index pages or incorrect indexing can lead to a decline in search visibility.

By prioritizing satisfying searcher intent and answering their unspoken questions, such as where they are, what they can do, and why they should do it, you can focus on delivering value and consistently producing gains for your business.