With the global SaaS market booming—from $317.55 billion in 2024 to an expected $1,228.87 billion by 2032 (according to Fortune Business Insights)—more businesses are shifting to subscription models. This makes it tough to stand out in search engine results pages (SERPs).
So, how do you rise above the noise?
We’re here to share the scoop on why link building is your best friend in this quest. It’s not just about snagging more visitors; it’s about making your SaaS the go-to name in your field.
Here’s what we’ll dive into:
TL;DR
Link building isn’t just another checkbox for your SaaS company’s SEO strategy; it’s a powerhouse of potential that can drive growth and success. Here’s how:
Getting your brand mentioned on reputable websites does wonders for your credibility. When users see your links on trusted sites, your brand instantly gains trustworthiness. It's like getting a nod of approval from the experts in your field.
Quality backlinks act as bridges, connecting users to your website and boosting your online presence. Fewer low-quality links can give you more chances of getting visitors who are already interested in your offers.
This targeted traffic not only increases your numbers but also brings in potential customers more likely to convert. Many successful SaaS brands focus on driving organic inbound traffic to build a solid readership base, leading to higher conversion rates.
Take Ahrefs, for example, a perfect SaaS website with tons of traffic:
However, not all companies have a unified SEO approach. Some rely too heavily on paid advertising, which can provide quick results but often lacks long-term value.
A well-structured link-building strategy focusing on quality backlinks can lead to sustainable growth. This way, you can attract more customers without the ongoing costs of paid advertising.
It’s not just about quantity but quality too. Everyone needs sales, right? And link building is the best tactic for boosting your SEO, which eventually may turn into quality leads.
By targeting the right links, you can attract visitors who are more likely to convert into leads and sales. This is crucial for reaching your target audience and driving meaningful engagement.
According to DesignRush, video marketing is the most popular option across all marketing channels, and Instagram is the number 1 SM channel for influencer marketing (with $2.21B+ spending expected in 2024).
Just like in other sectors, link building is an essential part of an SEO strategy for SaaS companies.
Kristavja Caci, SEO Editor at SurferSEO, emphasizes the importance of backlinks in climbing the SERP ranks.
SaaS is a very competitive industry, so it’s important to use all techniques to boost your online visibility and domain authority – link building being one of the most important.
SEO Editor at Surfer
Nick Malekos, the Head of SEO at LearnWorlds and Founder at Marketing Experts Hub, believes that backlinks from high-quality websites are particularly important if you want to win the top spots in SERPs:
Links are an important component of any SEO strategy, especially in competitive niches and money pages. For SaaS, in order to rank for bottom-of-the-funnel keywords you need to build high-quality, niche-relevant links towards your most important pages or blogs.
Head of SEO at LearnWorlds
Take PandaDoc, for example. This digital document management platform saw a massive traffic jump from 184k to 581k visitors per month thanks to our team building strong links with sites like Monday.com (DR 90), G2.com (DR 91), Uprcity.com (DR 85), and Eweek.com (DR 83).
That’s a staggering 212% increase, showcasing the power of strategic link building.
Antonio Gabric, Outreach Manager at Hunter.io, points out that while established brands might already have link equity, newcomers must focus on building quality links to gain traction in their niche.
If you’re already a well-known brand or a first-mover, there’s a chance you’ve naturally acquired a lot of link equity, which doesn’t mean you can stop focusing on link building. However, you might not need to build as many high-quality links as a newcomer to the field would.
Outreach Manager at Hunter.io
Ultimately, it’s not just about boosting your metrics; it’s about making meaningful connections and positioning your brand as a go-to choice in your field.
By focusing on top-notch backlinks, your SaaS company can rise above the competition, bring in more potential customers, and enjoy steady growth over the long haul.
Building links for SaaS companies is nothing like a walk in the park.
As you already know, the SaaS market is extremely competitive, with countless businesses fighting for top spots in search results for similar keywords. This crowded landscape means standing out requires creative strategies and unique content that truly add value.
Here are just a couple of relevant excerpts from our recent Link Building Statistics survey of 113 SEO experts:
In the SaaS sector, earning backlinks is more challenging than in local SEO due to the competitive nature of SaaS markets. While local businesses can thrive with a few strategic links, SaaS requires more comprehensive link-building efforts.
SEO Strategist
SaaS link building is most successful in established sectors like Sales Tech, MarTech, and HR Tech, where active communities are invested in SEO. Building relationships in these spaces is easier due to the collaborative SEO culture.
Conversely, niches associated with sensitive topics often face tougher link-building challenges due to stricter vetting by SEO teams. In these cases, establishing trust and credibility becomes essential for earning quality backlinks.
Founder of Scalerrs
However, as Nick points out, it’s difficult to secure such links to pages that really matter for your SaaS:
The challenge with link-building is that most of the time you want to build links in pages like “Top X Software” or “Best Y for Z” or “Company X Alternatives”, those are branded or category links that are pretty hard to find relevant content and build links to.
Head of SEO at LearnWorlds
This issue is echoed by Kristavja Caci who highlights the niche nature of many SaaS tools, making it tough to find authoritative sites willing to link back.
SaaS tools tend to be quite niche, so it can prove difficult to find many authoritative sites that’ll link to you.
SEO Editor at Surfer
Again, link building can be particularly challenging for new companies without established brand visibility:
The … challenge would involve building brand awareness… Starting link-building efforts for a new business that nobody has heard of can make it significantly harder to make an impact initially. Having a well-known brand name behind you can make things somewhat easier.
Outreach Manager at Hunter.io
The expert from Hunter.io also mentions the difficulty of establishing connections and hiring the right team to handle link-building, which can be a hurdle for startups.
Considering all the challenges, building links for SaaS companies at scale may not be feasible without help from an experienced SaaS link-building agency.
Not every backlink will deliver positive results, and the methods used to get them are just as important. Some approaches can accidentally cause search engines to penalize your site.
Therefore, we’ve compiled a list of common pitfalls to avoid:
It might be tempting to use shortcuts like buying links on sites like Fiverr or engaging in link schemes, but Google will penalize your site for these dishonest methods. This includes getting links from low-quality or irrelevant websites and participating in excessive self-promotion.
Our detailed guide: Black Hat Link Building: 7 Dodgy Techniques To Avoid
These tactics can severely damage your website's reputation.
For the same reason, stay out of link farms that can hurt your site's SEO. Google may see this as trying to game the system rather than earning links naturally.
Plus, it often results in low-quality links that don’t improve your content or the user experience.
Using the same anchor text repeatedly or stuffing it with keywords can backfire. Instead, keep your anchor text varied and natural.
Tips for anchor text:
Getting backlinks from high-authority websites is great, but if those sites aren’t relevant to your business, they won’t provide much value.
Focus on links from sites related to your niche.
That said, a software company wouldn't benefit from a link on a furniture blog.
While it’s important to focus on key pages, don’t ignore other valuable content that can attract links, like informative blog posts or case studies.
Building links to these types of pages can support your overall SEO strategy by drawing in interested visitors and establishing your expertise.
Now that we've covered the basics, let's review 10 effective strategies to build those valuable backlinks for your SaaS business.
Broken link building is a classic technique that still holds potential when done right.
The principle is simple.
You look for broken links on sites relevant to your niche where you’d like a link and reach out to the webmaster or editor to replace it with a link to your content.
As you’re adding value to the linking site, such links should be easier to secure.
How to find such links?
Use SEO tools - Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz all have that feature in their suites.
In Ahrefs, type the domain in the Site Explorer, and navigate to the Broken Links report in the sidebar menu to view a list of all broken links there.
There are also plenty of browser extensions to help you identify broken links on a specific page but this is a much more time-consuming process.
How effective is the technique?
Nick mentions that it doesn’t work as well as it used to be:
…it’s an overused tactic with a low ROI in links right now. It still works just not greatly. The main issue is that most websites now will either ask for payment or a link as an exchange. Out of 100 broken links, maybe 2-3 will be free, but you might get 5-10 more by exchanges.
Head of SEO at LearnWorlds
Backlink exchanges, or link swaps, are currently one of the most effective strategies for building backlinks. According to Nick:
This is the best way to build links nowadays. The best advice I can give is always keep quality in mind, and try to get links from a page with good content, referring links, or that is ranking by itself.
Head of SEO at LearnWorlds
Ahrefs reported that 73.6% of websites have reciprocal links, and we found that link swaps are the go-to tactic for 24.8% of link builders.
Link exchanges involve trading links with companies in similar niches. For example, a social media management platform like Buffer might swap links with a CRM platform like HubSpot.
However, direct link swaps can be risky and may violate search engine guidelines. Here’s what Antonio Gabric from Hunter.io has to say about this:
We rarely do direct exchanges. The most effective method, which leaves no footprint for Google to detect, is ABC link exchanges.
The ideal scenario is owning at least two websites, allowing for quick insertion of links. If you don’t own multiple sites, you can always partner with other domain owners and leverage their authority for ABC exchanges.
Outreach Manager at Hunter.io
Instead, try the A-B-C method:
This approach reduces the chance of leaving a footprint for search engines to detect.
Finding link exchange opportunities:
Facebook and LinkedIn groups, as well as Slack channels, are popular places to find potential link exchange partners. Some link builders, like Antonio, create their own invite-only channels specifically for this purpose.
To earn backlinks, your content must provide real value to other websites. This means creating linkable assets that people want to reference.
Below are a few main types of linkable content:
Create comprehensive statistical reports filled with original data, statistics, and insights. For instance, an article on SEO statistics by Ahrefs has garnered around 5k organic backlinks, thanks to its detailed data and visual infographics.
Also, our previously-mentioned fresh report on 2024 link building statistics is already backed by 12 referring domains. This is due to our detailed data, expert quotes, and visual infographics.
Step-by-step guides addressing user pain points are excellent link magnets. For example, this step-by-step Beginner’s Guide to SEO by Moz has links from 15k referring domains.
Additionally, Ahrefs' guides in their blog section often attract numerous links by offering thorough solutions to common problems.
Providing free tools like Ahrefs' SEO tools or SurferSEO's Chrome extension can generate thousands of backlinks. These tools not only attract links (1.6K and 2.1k, respectively) but also demonstrate product value, supporting a product-led growth strategy.
At Editorial.Link, we have our custom free tool as well! The Link Type Classifier can help you find out which sites build backlinks manually (like we do) and which sell them directly.
Remember, patience is key.
One thing to bear in mind is that it takes time for your assets to start generating organic links:
You have to be really patient with linkable assets as they may take a few months to start getting links and 1-2 years to bring good results.
Head of SEO at LearnWorlds
One way to accelerate link acquisition for your link bait content is by promoting it with digital PR.
Have a look at this article on a very current topic - AI in education:
The article has generated about 30 links organically. And then 40 more as a result of a PR campaign by another company that used it as a source.
Producing topical content and providing commentary on current events is only one way to secure links from high-quality sites.
The obvious way to leverage PR campaigns is to create hype around your new product and feature launches.
HARO, or Help a Reporter Out, is another way to secure links from media outlets.
The technique allows you to leverage your expertise and industry knowledge to build links by helping journalists and bloggers who are on the lookout for unique insights to enhance their articles.
To do so, head over to HARO, Help a B2B Writer, or Featured (former Terkel.io), and register as a source. Choose your area of expertise where you can help and set the frequency with which the service emails you with requests.
How easy is it to get featured? You need two 2 things to succeed with HARO: speed and engaging content with a unique angle on the subject.
The method can be effective, but it requires a fair bit of effort, as Nick admits:
We used HARO & HelpAB2BWriter. The latter is more effective and relevant for our niche, B2B SaaS, but takes a lot of effort.
Head of SEO at LearnWorlds
Guest posting involves creating an article for another company in exchange for a backlink.
Here’s an example of such a blog written by Irina Maltseva, the Head of Growth at Aura, published by Ahrefs.
How do you secure such opportunities?
Just post on LinkedIn that you need a guest posting service and wait for your inbox to explode with all the quality offers (joke).
Seriously, though, Google is your best friend here. Just use the right search operators with the keyword you’re after.
For example, if you're looking for blogs and websites about project management accepting guest posts, search for:
Again, quality is of utmost importance when choosing sites for your guest posts:
Don’t compromise on link quality. It’s better to not have any links pointing to your domain rather than having links from low-authority or sketchy sites.
SEO Editor at Surfer
Finding a high-DR website that accepts blog posts is the easy part. The hard part is pitching your content to convince the editor it’s worth giving you a shot.
To increase your chances, make sure to personalize every single outreach email that you send. Research the content style of the blog you’re targeting and show how you can add value for the readers. This could be by filling in a content gap or presenting a new perspective on the topic.
Sounds like a lot of work for one backlink, right?
Here’s how you can make it scalable:
We typically share our guest post drafts with our partners, allowing them to include their links in our guest posts. In exchange, they add our links into their websites or their upcoming guest posts…
Here’s the math:
– You write one guest post and insert one link to your business, plus three links for your partners.
– Instead of securing just one unique link, you could potentially acquire four, all from a single guest post.
Outreach Manager at Hunter.io
SaaS companies can use listicles to build links in two ways:
Let’s start with the first one.
To begin with, use Google to find relevant roundups or listicles. Use the search operator -“product name” to exclude all of those that already mention your product.
The odds are that many of them are written by your competitors - that’s one of the challenges of SaaS link-building.
If you manage to find one that isn’t, the same pitching rules apply as to guest posting: personalize your pitch and deliver value. This could be free credits for your tool, access to premium features, or an invitation to your affiliate program.
Here’s an example of an excellent pitch:
Again, this process can be resource-intensive but it’s totally worth the effort:
This type of content, which targets users closer to the bottom of the sales funnel, tends to convert quite well. Therefore, having your business featured in these listicles not only boosts link equity but also generates potential new leads.
Outreach Manager at Hunter.io
If you’re struggling to find a listicle on a site with a decent DR but not written by a competitor, take things in your own hands a create such articles yourself.
This could be an article that features tools targeting the same user group but not direct competitors.
For example, let’s imagine you’re building links for a platform like Userpilot, which allows teams to engage users inside the product.
In your article on the best user engagement tools, you can list software that helps businesses engage users outside of the product, like social media management tools or email marketing platforms.
Before publishing the listicle, reach out to the marketing teams of featured tools and ask if they’re interested in a link exchange.
Unlinked brand mentions are said to be the low-hanging fruit in the link-building world. After all, you have a foot in the door - the website is already talking about you so they might as well link back to your website, right?
Well, it’s not so easy. They might do it but as is the case with the other techniques, you may need to bribe them.
One way to compensate the website owners could be by inviting them to join the affiliate program, like LearnWorlds do:
We collaborate with our affiliate department for this. Unlinked brand mentions are being send to them and they reach out to get an affiliate link + increase our order in the page.
Head of SEO at LearnWorlds
Finding unlinked mentions isn’t hard with the right tools. This could be dedicated social listening tools, like Mention or Brand24, but your SEO tools will do as well.
Here’s how you do it in Ahrefs Content Explorer:
It goes without saying that this technique works only if you have enough visibility for people to talk about you:
It works only for established businesses. If your products are not well-known, it’s unlikely that they will be mentioned. But for established businesses, I always recommend checking the mentions at least a few times per year.
Outreach Manager at Hunter.io
As a SaaS business, how many different tools do you have in your tech stack? Your marketing team alone probably uses at least a dozen.
All these companies, many of them with decent DR, are potential sources of backlinks: reach out to them and offer to provide a testimonial - in exchange for a backlink.
You can take it one step further and collaborate with the tool vendors on case studies. Such resources are of particular value for companies because they allow them to illustrate the real-life impact of their tool.
And you, in addition to the link, get increased exposure for your brand.
Finally, if you’re in the B2B space, try reversing the process: invite your customers to collaborate on case studies and leave testimonials. Offering them a chance to get a backlink from your site can lead to link-building opportunities for your SaaS (exchanges, guest posts, listicles)
Given the competitive nature of the SaaS sector, not all companies have the expertise to handle link building in-house. Outsourcing to a specialist agency can be a smart move, but choosing the right one is crucial.
Below are key considerations when choosing a link-building agency:
Look for agencies that share detailed case studies of their link-building campaigns for other SaaS companies. Successful case studies show the agency's ability to deliver real results.
A solid track record shows they know what they're doing, especially for SaaS companies, and gives you peace of mind that they can hit your targets too.
Examine testimonials from previous clients to gauge satisfaction and service quality.
Check independent review platforms like Clutch and G2.com for unbiased feedback.
Positive reviews from similar SaaS businesses are a strong indicator of the agency’s competence.
Opt for unfiltered reviews. If SaaS companies like yours are singing their praises, it’s a good sign they deliver the goods and won’t leave you hanging.
Choose an agency that offers clear communication and transparency about their link-building campaigns. Avoid agencies that promise quick fixes or use unclear tactics.
Steer clear of those promising overnight miracles or using fuzzy tactics—they might just lead to trouble with search engines.
A reputable agency will lay out their link-building plan, clearly explain how they build links, and set realistic expectations.
Remember, open communication is key to building trust and ensuring everyone’s on the same page.
You need reports that actually tell you something. Look for agencies that provide detailed insights into the number of links built and, more importantly, their quality and impact on your SEO metrics.
You want to see how your search rankings, website traffic, and lead generation are improving. Solid reporting helps you keep tabs on their progress and tweak your SEO strategy as needed.
No two SaaS companies are alike, so avoid cookie-cutter strategies. Find an agency that crafts a customized link-building plan just for you. They should hunt down high-quality, relevant links that fit your brand and audience.
Personalized outreach and content that vibes with potential partners are where it’s at. A tailored approach means your link-building efforts are on point, boosting your authority and credibility in the industry.
SaaS is an exciting but also challenging sector for building links. This is mostly because of high competition among companies whose content already dominates SERPs and makes it difficult to get your foot in.
To succeed in link-building in this kind of environment, simply creating quality content doesn’t cut it. Link-builders need to think strategically, foster meaningful industry relationships, and continuously adapt to the evolving landscape.
If you’re looking for a SaaS link-building agency, get in touch with the Editorial.Link team for a chat about your link-building needs.
