We’re building the WebAudits tool in public and sharing the findings as a series. I posted on Reddit in r/buildinpublic offering free site audits, and the thread took off. Founders started sharing links, and I ended up with 30 express audits.
The same issues. On almost every site. Not edge cases. The fundamentals.
Here's what we found.
1. The Whole Page Lives Inside JavaScript
This was the #1 issue across the batch. Open the page - looks great. View source - nearly empty <div> soup.
When headlines, features, pricing, and CTAs only exist after JS executes, crawlers get almost nothing useful. Google can process JavaScript, but it's slow and never guaranteed. AI crawlers like GPTBot and PerplexityBot skip JS execution entirely.
curl -s https://yoursite.com | grep "<h1"
If the curl output shows nothing and the browser shows everything - you have a problem.
Fix: Move critical content to SSR or SSG. Headings, pricing, FAQs - all need to exist in static HTML before any scripts run.
2. No Canonical Tags
UTM parameters, A/B test variants, similar feature pages, regional copies - SaaS sites generate duplicate URLs almost automatically. Without canonicals, Google picks which version to index. That choice rarely matches yours.
Link equity splits across duplicates. Pages compete against each other. Rankings fragment quietly over time.
Fix: Self-referencing canonical on every indexable page. Parameter-based URLs point to the primary. Audit your framework's head template - this is almost always a systemic gap.
3. No H1. Or Five H1s. Both Happened.
When heading structure is driven by CSS classes rather than semantic HTML, things break fast. We found sites with beautiful hero sections and zero H1 tags. Others had three. A few skipped from H1 directly to H4.
<!-- What we kept finding -->
<div class="hero-title">Our Amazing Product</div>
<!-- What it should be -->
<h1>Our Amazing Product</h1>
Fix: One H1 per page. H2s for sections, H3s for subsections. Structure for meaning, not aesthetics.
4. Zero Structured Data
Out of 30 sites - almost none had schema markup. Not even Organization. Nothing.
Schema isn't magic, but it closes a real information gap. It tells search engines and AI systems exactly what type of content they're reading. Without it, that context has to be inferred.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "SoftwareApplication",
"name": "Your Product",
"applicationCategory": "BusinessApplication"
}
Fix: Start with Organization and WebSite sitewide. Add SoftwareApplication to product pages, FAQPage to FAQ sections.
5. No Social Proof Where It Matters
Strong copy, zero evidence anyone actually uses the product. In SaaS, where someone is picking between three similar tools, this is a real conversion problem.
We saw testimonials buried below the footer on sections nobody scrolls to. A few real customer quotes with names and roles - placed before the CTA - change this completely.
Fix: 3-5 genuine quotes, above the fold or right before the primary CTA.
6. No About Page. No Contact Email.
You're asking someone to connect their workflow and pay monthly. There's no About page. No email. No indication of who built this or why.
Google's Quality Rater Guidelines flag this explicitly as a weak E-E-A-T signal. Buyers notice it before Google does.
Fix: About page, Contact page, company info in the footer. Takes an afternoon. Removes a real trust barrier.
7. Forty JavaScript Files on the Marketing Page
Analytics. Chat. A/B testing. Heatmaps. Three ad pixels. An onboarding widget. Nobody removes anything. Two years later the landing page loads in six seconds on mobile.
PageSpeed Insights > Waterfall chart > render-blocking scripts
We saw sites loading 40+ scripts on the marketing homepage. The SaaS app can be heavy - the landing page shouldn't be.
Fix: Audit what's running. Cut what isn't contributing measurable value. Defer the rest.
8. No Pricing Page
"[Product] pricing" is one of the highest-intent queries for any SaaS tool. When there's no pricing page - or pricing requires a sales call - that audience bounces.
A dedicated /pricing page also directly targets commercial keywords that are otherwise hard to rank for. Skipping it costs both traffic and conversions simultaneously.
Fix: Pricing page with tiers, key limits, billing options. Linked from main nav. If exact pricing isn't possible, show a starting figure.
9. FAQ Content That Answers Nobody's Real Questions
Or no FAQ at all. The sites that had one usually filled it with generic filler nobody actually asked.
Real buyer questions about integrations, billing, security, and onboarding match real search queries almost word for word. A well-structured FAQ also makes it easier for AI systems to extract and cite your content directly.
Fix: Pull 8-10 questions from sales calls and support tickets. Add FAQPage schema. Put it on product and pricing pages, not just a buried FAQ page.
10. Broken robots.txt
Still misconfigured on a surprising number of sites. One we reviewed had robots.txt blocking all JavaScript files - crawlers couldn't render anything properly. Another had no sitemap at all, with 80 pages Google had never seen.
https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt
https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
Fix: Validate both files. Submit sitemap in Google Search Console. Confirm robots.txt isn't blocking CSS or JS - common on Next.js and React sites.
The Real Pattern
SaaS teams are focused on the product. The marketing site grows, accumulates technical debt, and nobody goes back. The result is a site that looks polished and leaks visibility at every layer - in Google, in AI answers, and in buyer trust.
None of this requires a rebuild. Most of it is fixable in a week. But first you have to actually look.
Full breakdown with audit checklist: webaudits.dev/resources/top-10-seo-mistakes-saas/
Nikola Sava - Website Auditor at Web Audits.
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