It’s a tough fight to come out on top in the highly competitive SaaS industry. A strong digital presence is essential to outperform competitors in the fast-growing and multi-billion-dollar industry. There are many ways to boost your chances, one of the most powerful of which is implementing structured data or schema markup on your website.

Using structured data is essential for any website, but it’s especially important for SaaS companies. It enables search engines and AI tools to understand and present accurate information about your services, products, and brand directly in search results, helping you reach potential customers.

Implementing the correct structured data into your SaaS site may also increase your chances of appearing in one of Google’s many rich SERP features, including AI overviews (AIOs). Using appropriate schema markup for SaaS companies enhances your online visibility and prevents your brand from getting lost in the noise.

What is schema markup?

Schema markup is code added to a website’s HTML using JSON-LD from Schema.org. It provides context to help search engines and AI tools better understand content and its specific elements. This helps them digest the content and pull out appropriate information for relevant queries and prompts.

SaaS brands can use structured data to help search engines, AI, and humans more easily understand the services they sell. Schema markup enables more information from a SaaS business to appear in rich results within search results, such as prices, reviews, product information, location, and other details.

Why is schema important for SaaS companies?

The SaaS industry is a constantly growing market, while search engines and large language models (LLMs) are continually improving their ability to understand websites. Implementing schema markup is a great way to provide the contextual information they need about the services and products SaaS companies sell, such as:

  • Product pricing information
  • Breadcrumb information
  • Customer reviews
  • Q&A and FAQ sections
  • Job postings.

Schema enhances how your services and products are displayed in the search engine results page (SERP) for specific keywords. It enables Google to include your services and products in its rich snippets, surfacing information about pricing, location, reviews, and more.

People research and compare SaaS brands during the consideration stage, and this helps make the process quicker. You can highlight important information to potential customers to encourage them to visit your site and increase sales.

Using structured data to highlight service and product-specific information makes it as easy as possible for search engines and AI models to comprehend your content. This improves the chance of appearing in AIOs and AI search with links, further enhancing conversion potential.

All of this can help increase relevant, valuable traffic to your website, boosting click-through rates and conversions in the competitive SaaS market.

Schema for SaaS sites

There are hundreds of schema markup types, each of which helps Google and AI tools understand important information about the content on a webpage. The ones most relevant to SaaS include various kinds of products, FAQ, and organisation schemas.

SoftwareApplication schema

SoftwareApplication schema defines details about an app. This includes:

  • applicationCategory (the type of software)
  • availableOnDevice (required devices to run the app)
  • countriesSupported and countriesNotSupported (countries where it is and isn’t supported)
  • featureList (features the app provides)
  • operatingSystem (operating systems supported)
  • releaseNotes (any changes for new and updated versions).

Using the SoftwareApplication structured data markup to supply as much specific information as possible helps search engines comprehend complex details about SaaS products. It can boost the chances of these webpages surfacing in traditional and AI search, satisfying many queries – especially niche longtail queries about operating requirements and app versions, for example.

Some of the key SaaS areas that benefit from this schema type include web development, data management, and API design.

WebApplication schema

This is a subset of SoftwareApplication structured data, suitable for products accessed via web browsers (rather than requiring a download). The key differentiator is the attribute browserRequirements, which helps identify the product as cloud-based and browser-accessible.

It helps search engines better understand and differentiate between SaaS products that can be accessed via a web browser (such as Canva) or require download and installation on a desktop (like Microsoft Word).

Review schema

Implementing a review schema markup on a product allows Google to display key review information within the SERPs. This includes the star-rating and total number of reviews, usually appearing underneath the product listing, like this:

Screenshot of an Amazon product schema on the SERPs
Screenshot of an example of how a product schema would look like on the SERPs

A review snippet helps your SaaS company stand out in the SERP’s real estate, potentially increasing your site’s click-through rate. As SaaS sites sell services, users look to real-life reviews to influence their decision about where to sign up or purchase a subscription.

Checking reviews is key at the consideration and buying stage when decision-makers are comparing options. Presenting accurate review information builds trust and credibility, and if a potential customer instantly sees five-star reviews, it could be the deciding factor. In the competitive SaaS market, this could be the difference between a customer clicking through to your site or looking elsewhere.

Implementing a review schema markup on a SaaS product also makes it clear to Google that it’s a product review. Having plenty of positive reviews of your products signals to search engines that your site is trustworthy and high-quality.

Organisation schema

Organisation schemas are commonly used by SaaS sites. This schema helps portray important information to search engines about your company, displaying your:

  • Name
  • Brand logo
  • Location and areas served
  • Contact information
  • Social media profiles.

Having this information displayed on the search results page builds trust by showing your business is legitimate and providing ways for people to contact you. This also assists by presenting your company when people search for local services or products, as it helps search engines understand the location and areas covered.

An example of an organisation schema looks like this:

Screenshot of an example of a organisation schema of Google

FAQ schema

Present common questions and answers about a SaaS product or service directly in the SERPs with FAQ schema markup. Websites across all industries apply this, but it’s especially useful for SaaS to address questions about pricing, features, and product integration.

FAQs help during the comparison and consideration stage, so users can quickly retrieve as much information as they need. It may reduce organic traffic, but providing key answers in the SERP could mean users who do click through are better informed and likelier to convert.

The FAQ schema also increases the likelihood that answers appear in People Also Ask (PAA). It helps search engines and AI better source, digest, and break down technical and complex information when providing answers for specific queries and prompts.

Pricing and pages that include information about SaaS features and comparisons benefit from FAQ structured data, as these are the ones that potential customers consult before deciding. Don’t duplicate FAQs across multiple pages or add filler questions, though, as this can cause duplication issues and add little value.

how much does canva cost schema example.
An example of FAQ schema around how much Canva costs

Schema for monthly and annual pricing options

Although SaaS sites operate similarly to most transactional sites, they usually offer subscription-based product models rather than single transactions. For this reason, using a schema for SaaS products must be structured in a way that’s specific to a subscription-based product.

Explore a schema example for SaaS companies that offer a subscription-based product model created by our very own Dan Taylor.

Product schema

You can represent SaaS offerings as a product with a relevant schema, even though they’re technically services. This helps represent key pricing, features, and descriptions of your SaaS products directly in the SERPs. Attributes, including product variants, offer type, and aggregate rating, all help during the consideration stage for decision-makers comparing SaaS options.

Service schema

Service schema markup can be implemented alongside product schema to define the services your SaaS business provides. The main attributes help detail a description of the service, the type of service, and the provider. This is an important schema for service-oriented websites, such as SaaS organisations.

Using multiple schema mark-ups

It’s possible to implement more than one schema on a page if it follows Google’s structured data guidelines, which is to always describe ‘user-visible page content’. For example, you may want to implement a product and an FAQ schema on the same page of your site. This is fine to do if the page includes a product and an FAQ section that the user can view.

How to add structured data to your SaaS site

There are a few ways to implement structured data into your site. JSON-LD is Google’s recommended format. JSON-LD takes semantic data and turns it into a small piece of code that can be implemented via the <script> tag in the page head or body of an HTML webpage. This method is supported by Google and other search engines because it:

  • Is accessible and easy to use
  • Supports any .org schema, so you can make a universal solution if you want to make multiple changes to the site
  • Uses code that’s less likely to break existing pages.

Testing structured data on your SaaS site

It’s crucial to test your structured data to determine if it works. Schemas can be tested using tools such as Google’s rich results tester or the Schema.org validator, although the latter provides more information.

You can test your snippets of code or the URL you’ve already published in these tools and determine whether they’re successfully implemented or if you need to diagnose any problems with your structured data.

Scaling your Schema implementation

Most SaaS sites are large with a huge number of different pages. It would be incredibly time-consuming to manually create an individual schema markup for each page.

Instead, it’s more efficient to create a template of a general schema markup for different sections of the site, such as the category, product, or contact page.

Implement schema for your SaaS site with SALT

Think your SaaS website could be more competitive with schema implementation, but are unsure where to start? Our experts can help assess your site and advise on where to use structured data effectively alongside our wider technical SEO services.

Get in touch to discuss your SaaS website and how schema implementation could help improve its performance.