What to fix on your SaaS website in the first week after launch

On this page

1. The week at a glance
2. Day 1: can the site be read?
3. Day 2: can the site be found?
4. Day 3: does the site say what the product is?
5. Day 4: which AI crawlers are allowed in?
6. Day 5: is the site fast enough?
7. Day 6: what will a buyer compare you with?
8. Day 7: what do you know that nobody else does?
9. What can you skip?
10. What comes after the first week?
11. Questions
12. Sources

In the first week, fix what stops your site being read, then what stops it being found, then what stops it being understood. After that, publish. Most new SaaS sites already pass the technical checks: 74.4% of the 313 we checked had all six basics. For most founders the week is better spent on pages than on settings.

The week at a glance

If your site passes days 1 to 5 on the first look, move on to day 6.

Day 1: can the site be read?

Open your home page, view the page source, and search for your headline. If it is there, crawlers can read the page. If it is missing, the page is built in the browser and this is the first thing to fix.

In our check, 29 of 313 home pages (9.3%) had fewer than 50 readable words in the HTML. Among sites set up as Vite single page apps the share was 33.3%¹.

This check comes first because the rest of the week depends on it. Vercel and MERJ reported in December 2024 that none of the major AI crawlers rendered JavaScript². Google does render it, and still advises that server side rendering or pre-rendering "is still a great idea"³.

Run the same test on your pricing page and one other page. The tests and the fixes are in Can Google and AI assistants read a site built with AI tools?.

Day 2: can the site be found?

Day 2 has four checks.

robots.txt. Visit yoursite.com/robots.txt. You should see a short text file. 24 of the 313 sites we checked (7.7%) had no valid robots.txt file¹.

Make sure the file does not block the whole site, which is a common leftover from development. Google notes that robots.txt controls crawling and "is not a mechanism for keeping a web page out of Google"⁵.

Sitemap. Visit yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. 28 of 313 sites (8.9%) had no sitemap¹.

Google says a sitemap is most likely to be needed when a site "is new and has few external links to it", which describes every product in its launch week⁴. Submit it in Google Search Console.

Canonical tags. Each page should name its own address as the canonical one. 30 of 313 home pages (9.6%) had no canonical tag¹. Google treats redirects and canonical tags as strong signals for which address to index⁶.

Stray noindex. Search the page source for "noindex". One of the 313 home pages we checked told search engines not to index it¹. It is rare and it is fatal, so look.

Day 3: does the site say what the product is?

Read your home page as a stranger would, then check five things.

1. Title. Every site in our check had one, and 9 had a title under 20 characters, which is usually just the product name¹. Add what the product does. Google builds the title it shows from several sources, and your title tag is the one you control⁷.
2. H1. One heading that says what the product is. 26 of 313 home pages (8.3%) had no H1 in the HTML, and 9 had more than one¹.
3. Meta description. 310 of 313 sites had one¹. Google builds its snippets mainly from the page content and sometimes uses the description⁸. Write one that states what the product does and who it is for.
4. A plain sentence. Near the top of the page, one sentence naming the product, what it does, and who it is for. Write it so that it still makes sense when quoted alone.
5. A pricing page. 113 of 313 sites (36.1%) had no pricing page we could find¹. If your prices are public, give them a page of their own with the numbers in the HTML.

Google states no character limit for titles or descriptions. It truncates what it shows to fit the screen⁷⁸. Write for sense and keep the important words near the front.

Then structured data. Add Organization markup to the home page. Google says it helps identify an organisation, and it has no required properties⁹.

Add SoftwareApplication markup only if you can fill it in honestly. To be eligible for a rich result, Google requires the name, a price, and a rating or review¹⁰. If you have no real reviews yet, leave the rating out.

Day 4: which AI crawlers are allowed in?

Decide on purpose. The companies behind the main assistants run separate crawlers for separate jobs, and robots.txt controls most of them.

Two details are easy to miss. Google-Extended is a control token and not a crawler, and Google says it "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search"¹⁹. And a site that opts out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, according to OpenAI¹⁶.

For a new product that wants to be found, the sensible default is to allow the search and user crawlers. Whether to allow the training crawlers is your decision.

Allowing the search and user crawlers is what most new products do already. In our check, 8 of 313 sites (2.6%) blocked any AI crawler from the whole site¹.

Any crawler you haven't named is allowed by default. You only need a rule to keep one out.

Day 5: is the site fast enough?

Test your home page on a phone connection with PageSpeed Insights and look at three numbers.

Those are Google's thresholds¹¹. Google confirms that "Core Web Vitals are used by our ranking systems" and gives no weighting, so nobody can tell you what a faster page is worth in rankings¹².

Most of the web falls short. The 2025 Web Almanac found that 48% of mobile pages passed all three in June 2025¹³.

On a new SaaS site the usual causes are large images, fonts that load late, and scripts that run before the page appears. Fix the largest image first.

Day 6: what will a buyer compare you with?

Write one comparison page. 146 of the 313 sites we checked (46.6%) had no comparison or alternatives page at all¹.

Pick the competitor your buyers mention most. Build a table of facts from their own pricing page, date it, and write an honest verdict on who should choose which. The comparison and alternatives pages every SaaS needs has the structure.

Day 7: what do you know that nobody else does?

Write one article around something of your own. It could be a number from your product, a test you ran, or a problem you solved and how you solved it.

127 of 313 new sites (40.6%) showed no blog or articles section¹. Google's guidance for AI search asks site owners to focus on unique content²⁰. The evidence on what assistants recommend points the same way, and we set it out in How AI assistants choose which products to recommend.

Pick a subject no other product in your category could have written about.

What can you skip?

Four things that take time and have no measured benefit.

If you already have an llms.txt file or FAQ markup, leave them. They do no harm. A visible questions section is still useful to readers.

What comes after the first week?

A routine. After the first week, visibility is built by steady work: a new page most weeks, facts kept current, and the product described in more places.

The full check that these figures come from is in We checked 313 new SaaS websites.

Questions

What is the first thing to check on a new SaaS website?

Whether the page content is in the HTML. View the page source and search for your headline. 9.3% of the new SaaS home pages we checked had fewer than 50 readable words without JavaScript.

Does a new website need a sitemap?

Yes. Google says a sitemap is most likely to be needed when a site is new and has few external links.

Should a new SaaS website block AI crawlers?

Not if you want assistants to find you. OpenAI says a site that opts out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Blocking training crawlers such as GPTBot is a separate choice.

Is there a character limit for title tags?

Google states none. It truncates titles and snippets to fit the device. Put the important words first.

Should I add an llms.txt file?

There is no measured benefit. Google says the file does not affect Google Search, and Ahrefs found that 97% of llms.txt files received no requests in May 2026.

Does FAQ schema still work?

Google stopped showing FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026. A visible questions section is still useful for readers.

Sources

1. SaaS GTM, site check of 313 newly launched SaaS websites, 28 September 2026. Own data. Method and totals.
2. Vercel and MERJ, "The rise of the AI crawler", 17 December 2024. https://vercel.com/blog/the-rise-of-the-ai-crawler
3. Google Search Central, "Understand the JavaScript SEO basics", updated 4 March 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/javascript/javascript-seo-basics
4. Google Search Central, "Learn about sitemaps", updated 10 December 2025. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/overview
5. Google Search Central, "Introduction to robots.txt", updated 10 December 2025. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/intro
6. Google Search Central, "How to specify a canonical URL with rel=canonical and other methods", updated 10 July 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/consolidate-duplicate-urls
7. Google Search Central, "Influencing your title links in search results", updated 10 December 2025. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link
8. Google Search Central, "Control your snippets in search results", updated 20 April 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/snippet
9. Google Search Central, "Organization structured data", updated 8 September 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/organization
10. Google Search Central, "Software app (SoftwareApplication) structured data", updated 8 September 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/software-app
11. Google Search Central, "Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google search results", updated 10 December 2025. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/core-web-vitals
12. Google Search Central, "Understanding page experience in Google Search results", updated 22 September 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/page-experience
13. HTTP Archive, Web Almanac 2025, chapter 5, "SEO", published 15 January 2026. https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2025/seo
14. Google Search Central, "Latest documentation updates", entry on removing the FAQ rich result, updated 24 September 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/updates
15. Google Search Central, "Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search", updated 10 July 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide
16. OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers". https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots
17. Anthropic, "Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?", 7 April 2026. https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler
18. Perplexity, "Perplexity Crawlers". https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots
19. Google Search Central, "List of Google's common crawlers", updated 14 July 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers
20. Google Search Central Blog, "Top ways to ensure your content performs well in Google's AI experiences on Search", 21 May 2025. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/05/succeeding-in-ai-search
21. Google Search Central, "Dynamic rendering as a workaround", updated 10 December 2025. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/javascript/dynamic-rendering