The Complete Guide to Saas Link Building Strategies

Building a strong online presence for your SaaS (Software as a Service) business is crucial, and link building plays a vital role in achieving this goal.

High-quality backlinks from reputable sources can significantly improve your website's authority and ranking on search engines.

Guest blogging can be an effective way to acquire links from other websites. According to section 3, guest blogging can help you build relationships with other industry professionals and increase your online presence.

Ahrefs, a popular SEO tool, found that guest blogging can drive up to 90% more traffic to your website.

SaaS link building is the practice of acquiring links from other websites to your SaaS website. This increases your SaaS brand’s visibility and ranking on search engines.

Having more backlinks for your articles or web pages indicates that you have high-quality content worth visiting. This is because Google has confirmed that backlinks are one of their three important search engine ranking factors.

The quality and relevancy of the backlinks are equally important as the number of backlinks in determining your ranking. It's not just about the number of links, but also about the quality of the websites linking to you and how relevant their content is to yours.

Think of these links as votes of confidence—the more votes (or links) you have from reputable sources, the more trustworthy your website appears to search engines like Google.

Link building is a crucial aspect of SaaS SEO, helping to increase credibility by getting mentioned on high-authority websites.

Google examines your backlink profile to determine your website's credibility and ranking. Having more links, in quality and quantity, than your competitors is essential for higher search engine rankings.

High-quality backlinks can drive more traffic to your website, leading to increased organic traffic and more sales.

Here are the four major benefits of link building for SaaS companies:

Establishing industry authority through link building can add weight to your brand, making you a thought leader in the SaaS domain.

Link building is a crucial aspect of SEO, and for SaaS companies, it's essential for establishing credibility and trust with visitors. By getting mentioned on high-authority websites, you can increase your credibility and make your visitors more likely to trust your content and expertise.

Link building helps you create a solid online presence, which is especially important for SaaS companies since everything is online. This can be achieved by providing four major benefits: building trust and credibility, increasing traffic, better search rankings, and more leads and sales.

A robust link profile can catapult your website to the top positions in search engine results pages (SERPs), making your SaaS solutions more discoverable. In fact, Google and other search engines prioritize backlinks as ranking signals, so a good link profile is essential for higher search engine rankings.

High-quality backlinks from reputable sources can drive referral traffic, ensuring that a steady stream of relevant users interested in SaaS solutions land on your website. This can be achieved by building relationships with industry peers, bloggers, and journalists through the link building process.

To reap these benefits, you must remember that link building is not a one-way street, it's a negotiation of placing your link on another's website. This carries a lot of uncertainty, both in terms of your backlink success rate and the effectiveness of search result rankings. However, with a dedicated strategy and quality SEO content, you can increase backlinks on your website and to your website.

Here are some key statistics to keep in mind:

By focusing on sustainable link-building methods, you can achieve a high return on investment (ROI), avoid penalties, and enjoy better search engine rankings. This is especially important for SaaS companies, where online presence and credibility are crucial for success.

In fact, a study by SEMrush found that nofollow links still contribute positively to a site's rankings, even if they don't directly pass link equity. This shows that the effect of nofollow links on SEO cannot be discounted, and they should still be considered as part of your link-building strategy.

By building a solid link profile and focusing on high-quality content, you can increase your chances of success in the competitive world of SaaS. Remember to consider anchor text, link position, and external links vs. internal links when building links, as these factors can affect search engine rankings.

To identify currently ranking keywords, you need to find the domains that are ranking for your desired keywords. These are the websites you'll be competing with for your target audience's attention.

Collecting the results of the first two pages for each target keyword will give you a list of the websites you need to outrank.

Understanding who your competitors are will help you tailor your SEO strategy to effectively compete for your target audience's attention.

Link building is a crucial aspect of SaaS marketing, and there are several types to consider.

Guest blogging is a popular method, where you write articles for other websites in your niche. This can help you build relationships with other site owners and increase your authority in the industry.

Resource pages are another effective type, where you create a page on your site that links to other relevant resources. This can help you build high-quality backlinks and improve your search engine rankings.

According to our previous discussion, broken link building involves finding broken links on other sites and replacing them with working links to similar content on your own site. This can be a time-consuming task, but it's a great way to build backlinks and improve your site's credibility.

Two types of backlinks will get traffic to your website. However, please keep in mind that these links are indistinguishable to the reader as the difference lies in the source code.

These two types of backlinks are based on their tags. They can be a great way to increase traffic to your website, but it's essential to understand the source code to make the most of them.

The difference between the two types of backlinks is subtle, but it can make a big impact on your website's traffic.

Many SaaS products now integrate with other apps to make their services more accessible.

For example, accessing Trello and Google Calendar through Slack is a common integration.

You can leverage this opportunity to create content on other websites, earning you at least two backlinks.

This also presents a marketing opportunity to tap into the audience of your integration partners.

Zapier is a great starting point for building integrations, and researching your target audience can help you find ways to simplify their workflow.

Mailchimp gets a backlink to its homepage from the Zapier-Mailchimp integration page on Zapier.

This integration also led to a blog post educating Zapier's audience about the integration with Mailchimp.

You can ask your integration partner to publish a guest post about how to utilize the integration with your tool.

Having backlinks from educational institutions, such as universities, can add tremendous authority to your website.

Notion offers its product for free to students and teachers, earning them backlinks from multiple universities.

To start building high-quality links for your SaaS website, you need to conduct a thorough audit and research. This involves understanding your industry's marketplace and identifying your target audience. Knowing your audience is key to creating content that resonates with them.

You can use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to capture the initial details of the domains currently ranking in your industry, such as the number of referring domains, URLs, and backlinks. This will give you a benchmark to aim for.

Conducting a backlink audit will also help you understand the competition and identify opportunities for improvement. Keep in mind that established players in your industry may have a huge number of backlinks, but that's okay. As you build your authority, you'll naturally attract more mentions and backlinks.

To identify opportunities for link-building, focus on finding authoritative websites relevant to your niche and target audience. This requires meticulous research and creative outreach strategies. You can also use domain rating (DR) as a predictive measure of a website's ability to rank on search engine result pages.

To conduct an audit of current rankings, start by finding the domains that are currently ranking for your desired keywords. This will give you the list of websites that are currently ranking for them, and you'll be competing with them for your target audience's attention.

For each target keyword, collect the results of the first two pages. This will give you a clear picture of the competition and help you understand what you're up against.

Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to capture the initial details like the number of referring domains, URLs, backlinks, etc. This will give you a benchmark that you need to reach.

Don't get overwhelmed if some of the old players in your domain have a huge number of backlinks. Keep in mind that they have been doing this for years, and as you become an authoritative tone in your industry, you will get mentioned in other domains naturally.

Conduct a backlink audit of the domains that are currently ranking to get a definitive number (or a range) of backlinks that your SaaS website needs to earn to beat the highest-ranking pages.

Conducting thorough research is a crucial step in any link-building strategy. Understanding your industry's marketplace is vital to identifying your audience.

Knowing your audience helps you create winning content that resonates with them. This also allows you to find out who they're already following, giving you insight into the kinds of content they're seeing and who your referral traffic might include.

To identify your competitors, you need to find out what kind of content they're putting out and identify their strongest links. This will help you understand their link-building strategy and find opportunities to outdo them.

You should focus on topical relevance while executing your link-building campaign. This means making sure the anchor text is related to the topic of the content you're linking to.

Here are some key considerations for ensuring link relevance:

Some links are better than others. The weightage of a backlink depends on the quality and quantity of backlinks present on the page and domain you are placed on.

Offering free tools can be a game-changer for your website, drawing in visitors and generating leads. Ahrefs is a great example of this, providing many free tools that have attracted 71,000 monthly visits and 9,000 backlinks.

Start with one powerful free tool, as Ahrefs did, and promote it in relevant communities to get people to use and link back to it. This will help you build momentum and establish your brand as a helpful resource.

By offering a free tool, you're providing value upfront and creating goodwill, which can lead to increased visibility and backlinks. Useful tools are naturally more likely to be shared and embedded on social media, blogs, and forums.

Free tools showcase the capabilities of your SaaS product, enticing users to explore your paid offerings. This strategy has proven effective for SaaS companies, attracting users and other websites that find the tools useful and want to share them with their audience.

To get started with audit and research, you need to understand the problems your target audience faces. SaaS companies should thoroughly understand the problems their target audience faces to produce infographics, videos, and helpful blog posts that offer solutions.

You can start by leveraging existing relationships and asking happy clients, partners, and affiliates for more links to your content. Send a clear proposal to them and start negotiating, as these connections already have a favorable opinion of your brand.

Guest posting is another great way to establish yourself as an authority in your field, but it requires identifying willing host sites that are reputable and have a strong online presence. You want platforms with a high domain authority and a target audience that aligns with yours.

A good content strategy is key to earning authoritative backlinks, so focus on producing infographics, videos, and thought leadership content that offers solutions to your target audience's problems.

Link building strategies for SaaS companies can be a game-changer for driving traffic and boosting SEO. Proven effective strategies include podcasting, where appearing as a guest can result in a link to your website in the show notes, driving direct traffic and signaling to search engines that your content is credible and authoritative.

You can also execute a backlink building strategy by conducting research, finding prospects, sending outreach, and completing follow-ups. Another strategy is natural link exchanges, where you link to a partner's website in a blog article where it fits the context and adds value to the reader. However, be cautious not to overuse this strategy, as it can attract the wrong kind of attention from Google.

To get your product included in "best of" roundups, look for tech and business websites that publish curated lists highlighting the "best" tools or resources in specific categories. These roundups can drive referral traffic and boost your SEO, and being featured in a "best of" list can instantly add social proof to your brand.

Dofollow links are the easiest to create and directly impact your rankings. They are the most common type of link and are taken into consideration by search engines when assessing your backlink profile.

Unless specified, building links means building dofollow links. This is because they tell the search engine that the source of traffic is from a different domain.

You can create dofollow links through link exchanges, but be aware that some websites don't allow it. If that's the case, you can consider natural link exchanges as a next best option.

Natural link exchanges are a common occurrence, especially among SaaS companies. However, it's essential to carry out this strategy perfectly to avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention from Google.

To increase your chances of getting placed, reach out to active blogs only that consistently post new content. This will give you more options and increase the chances of getting your links organically placed.

Here are some friendly tips to get the best from your natural link exchange outreach:

Natural exchanges are a common occurrence in SaaS link building, with 73.5% of domains having reciprocal links. This strategy involves exchanging links with other websites, but it's essential to do it naturally and organically.

To execute natural exchanges effectively, it's crucial to reach out to active blogs only, as they can easily incorporate your links into their content. This will also give you more options and increase the chances of getting placed.

Consider sites with a Domain Rating (DR) of 30 or higher, as they will provide more value for your exchanges. Analyzing the website before reaching out using free tools like Majestic can also help you gauge its trustworthiness.

To build trust and increase the likelihood of getting a link, lead with value by linking to the other website first. You can also offer something else, such as a newsletter mention, a social media shoutout, or a link to another website where you're writing a guest post.

Here are some friendly tips to keep in mind:

Product Embed is a link building strategy that can be a goldmine for SaaS tools, generating a large number of backlinks. Typeform, for example, has generated a staggering 107M backlinks by allowing businesses to embed their forms on their websites and automatically including a link back to Typeform's form page.

This strategy is not possible for all SaaS tools, but it can be a valuable one for those that can implement it. Intercom, for instance, mentions "We run on Intercom" in each of their conversations, increasing visibility and serving as a gateway to their website.

The key to success with product embed is to make it a seamless and non-intrusive experience for users. This means avoiding annoying or overly promotional links that might turn users off.

By incorporating product embed into your link building strategy, you can tap into a new source of backlinks and improve your website's authority. It's a simple yet effective way to boost your online presence.

Here are 11 website strategies that are proven effective for SaaS companies.

MADX team has tested 15 powerful link-building strategies for SaaS companies.

A successful link-building strategy can impact your website's performance in a great way.

To find the right opportunities for your SaaS company, consider the mistakes to avoid in link building.

These mistakes can lead to penalties from search engines.

There are three examples that support the claim of a successful link-building strategy's impact on website performance.

Link building can improve your website's ranking and visibility.

Our team at MADX has found that link building can also increase website traffic.

To get started with link building, identify your target audience and their interests.

This will help you find relevant opportunities for your SaaS company.

You can use these opportunities to build high-quality backlinks to your website.

These backlinks can drive more traffic and sales to your SaaS company.

The Skyscraper Technique is a powerful link-building strategy created by Brian Dean, an SEO expert. It's all about writing better content than your competitors.

This technique involves reaching out to sites that are already backlinking to your competitors and pitching them your better content. The key is to produce content that stands out and cracks the top ten of search engine queries.

Producing content that is significantly better than your competitors is crucial to making this strategy work. It means you need to be able to offer something unique and valuable to your audience.

The idea is to create content that is so good, it becomes a benchmark for others to follow. But it's not a one-size-fits-all solution, and it may not work for all SaaS services, depending on your target market and audience.

Executing your link building strategy requires a solid plan and execution. Here are some key steps to follow.

First, research your prospects and identify relevant podcasts to reach your target audience. By strategically selecting podcasts that align with your target audience, you can tap into their established listener base and position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

Send a personalized outreach to the podcast hosts, highlighting the benefits of featuring you as a guest. This can include sharing your expertise and securing a link to your website in the show notes or episode description.

Complete follow-ups with the podcast hosts and prospects to ensure a smooth process. After the podcast appearance, promote the episode on your social media channels to drive direct traffic and increase brand awareness.

By executing these steps, you'll be one step closer to a solid SaaS link-building strategy.

The outreach process is a crucial part of saas link building, and it's essential to manage it properly to scale.

You need to track all your efforts and their results to profitably scale up or down your efforts to secure those links. This helps you refine your approach and make data-driven decisions.

To find authoritative domains that should mention you, perform a backlink audit of your competing domains for the same (or similar) keywords. This will give you a list of domains to start from, but be sure to eliminate partners or domains that require a threshold level of domain rating you're not yet at.

Here are some key actions to take:

The most important step in a successful outreach process is to identify the right targets to focus on, and that starts with prioritizing the domains that give you the most returns.

You should prioritize domains with high authority in your vertical, as they can provide more "link juice" to your website.

High authority domains also tend to have more organic traffic, which is a good indicator of their relevance to your niche.

To ensure you're not wasting time on uninterested visitors, focus on finding related websites and blogs in your vertical.

This will increase the chances of getting mentioned by the right people, who are already interested in your value proposition.

Managing your outreach process can get tedious, especially when dealing with multiple domains and follow-ups. Sending emails to tens of people every day can be overwhelming, and it's essential to track your efforts and results to scale up or down.

You should create a clear step-by-step document for your outreach process to ensure consistency and efficiency. This will help you "automate" the process to some degree, making it more manageable.

To track your efforts and results, you need to keep a record of all your outreach attempts, including the domains you've reached out to, the type of content you've offered, and the response you've received. This will enable you to identify patterns and areas for improvement.

Here are some key things to keep in mind when managing your outreach process:

By following these tips and keeping a clear record of your outreach efforts, you can streamline your process and increase your chances of securing quality backlinks.

Content creation is key to successful SaaS link building. High-quality content is essential, and search engines can tell the difference between genuine and low-quality posts.

To create link-worthy content, you need to offer tangible value to your readers. This could be in the form of actionable tips, thought-provoking insights, or data-driven observations. Problem-solving is also crucial, as addressing common pain points or questions in your industry will make your content more shareable.

Here are the key criteria for creating linkable content:

By consistently producing high-caliber content, you invite backlinks and build brand authority and trust.

You might be surprised to find out that images from your website are being used by other domains without giving you credit.

Conduct a reverse image search to find out where your images have been used without a link back to your website. This is a crucial step in identifying the issue.

Start contacting the editors and publishers of those websites and request them to give you a backlink to your website. This is a simple yet effective way to reclaim your content.

Invest in creating authentic images and infographics that add value to your readers. This will not only help you earn backlinks but also establish your brand as a credible source of information.

Build linkable assets, like the ones mentioned earlier, to earn backlinks on autopilot. This will save you time and effort in the long run.

The product embed strategy is a game-changer for SaaS companies. It's a goldmine of link placements that can increase visibility and drive traffic to your website.

Intercom is a great example of this strategy in action, mentioning "We run on Intercom" in each conversation to serve as a gateway to their website. This approach can be a bit tricky to implement, but for the right SaaS products, it can be incredibly effective.

Typeform is another example of a SaaS company that has leveraged the product embed strategy to generate a whopping 107 million backlinks. This is a testament to the power of embedding your product on other websites and allowing users to share links back to your site.

The key to successful product embed strategy is to integrate branded links within the functionalities or badges you offer to clients. This can include chatbots, surveys, widgets, or any other embeddable feature your solution might provide.

Low-quality content can be a major turnoff for readers and search engines alike. Search engines have become smart enough to understand the practice of guest posting for link building, which can lead to a flood of low-quality posts.

Creating high-quality content is crucial to get links back to your site without raising red flags. This means producing content that's informative, engaging, and valuable to your audience.

Guest posting with low-quality content can harm your website's credibility and reputation. Many businesses have fallen into this trap in the past, but it's essential to learn from their mistakes.

Brand mentions can be a powerful way to earn quality backlinks to your content. You can find these mentions by using tools like Ahrefs Content Explorer, which allows you to search for a brand name and exclude your domain.

Unlinked brand mentions are a great opportunity to earn backlinks with minimal effort. If your brand pops up on another website without any links or attributions, you can reach out and request a backlink. As the site is already familiar with your product, they'll most likely honor your request.

You can also use brand monitoring tools like SEMrush or BrandMentions to find unlinked brand mentions. These opportunities require the least amount of effort to give backlinks to your brand name.

To find unlinked brand mentions, you can filter the results for domain rating and traffic. This will help you identify the most relevant and high-quality mentions. Next, you can use a tool like BrandMentions to find out which of these sites have not linked back to you.

Here's a step-by-step guide to finding and requesting unlinked brand mentions:

Press releases offer a great opportunity to earn quality backlinks for your SaaS business.

Asana was featured in Tech.co for its new feature release, resulting in a backlink and increased visibility to create hype around the new workflow features.

Targeting news sites that focus on software, tech, or your niche can increase your chances of getting links from press releases.

Press coverage can have a knock-on effect, with other news sites noticing the feature and creating coverage of their own.

This can lead to a wider audience and more backlinks for your SaaS business.

Creating high-quality content is crucial for attracting backlinks and building brand authority. It's not just about throwing words on a page, but about providing value to your readers.

To make your content linkable, it must be engaging and shareable. This means fulfilling specific criteria, such as offering a tangible value proposition. Your content should provide actionable tips, thought-provoking insights, or data-driven observations that readers can't find anywhere else.

Problem-solving is another key aspect of linkable content. Address common pain points or questions in your industry, and provide solutions or answers that readers will appreciate. This will increase the chances of them sharing your content and other websites linking to it as a valuable resource.

Originality and authenticity are also essential. With so much content out there, unique perspectives, original research, or a fresh take on a trending topic can make your content stand out. Authentic content garners more backlinks and builds brand trust.

Here are the key elements of linkable content:

By consistently producing high-caliber content, you invite backlinks and build brand authority and trust. Remember, creating free, user-friendly micro-tools related to your main offering can attract a large number of quality backlinks and help you rank for vital keywords.

Podcasting is a great way to build links without spending too much time writing content. You can speak about your expertise for 30 to 45 minutes and earn a backlink when the podcast features you on their website.

To get started, find a podcast that aligns with your target audience and niche. Many business-focused podcasts are eager to feature founders, sharing compelling narratives of innovation and growth.

You can use two main strategies to earn backlinks through podcasting. First, you can be a guest on someone else's podcast, and when they feature you on their website, you earn a backlink. Second, you can feature someone on your podcast, and you earn a backlink when they share that on their website.

Some popular podcasts that can be relevant to your brand include tech or niche-specific podcasts. For example, the popular podcast "How I Built This" has featured numerous SaaS founders, like Rob Kalin of Etsy and Melanie Perkins of Canva.

Here are some tips for finding relevant podcasts:

By strategically selecting podcasts that align with your target audience, you can tap into their established listener base and position yourself as a thought leader in your industry. The combined effect of direct traffic, SEO benefits, and brand awareness makes podcast appearances a winning strategy for SaaS link building.

Coming up with linkable topics might seem like a challenge, but it's not as hard as you think. Linkable topics are often just riffs on popular topics relevant to yours or an adjacent industry.

Think about what your SaaS business is offering. Have you recently solved a problem? Found a new useful product that helps you conduct business? Sometimes the answer is right in front of you.

To find popular topics, you can run your ideas through a content explorer, such as Ahrefs Content Explorer or the Semrush Topic Research tool. These online marketing tools will show you various metrics to break down and apply to your digital marketing strategy.

Your industry will guide you in content creation, just like Hubspot tackles marketing or Canvas focuses on graphic design.

What gets measured, gets managed. You need to track your progress to know if your SaaS link building efforts are paying off.

To measure success, you should regularly monitor three key metrics: these metrics are essential to know whether your link-building efforts are getting the desired results.

It's necessary to set realistic goals, especially if you've just started your website. You can't expect to rank at the top of the SERPs within a month.

Domain Rating is a score between 1 and 100 that shows how authoritative and credible your website is according to search engines.

You can use several free tools to check your site's Domain Rating, including Website Authority Checker by Ahrefs, Domain Rating Checker by Small SEO Tools, Bulk Domain Rating Checker by SEO Review tools, and Free Domain SEO Analysis Tool by Moz.

Each of these tools uses different parameters to determine how SEO-friendly your site is, so don't be surprised if your website's domain is rated differently in each of them.

Here are some tools you can use to check your site's Domain Rating:

High Domain Rating scores are seen as more authoritative and influential, making it easier to rank on search engine result pages.

Your domain rating is a number between 1 and 100 that shows how authoritative and credible your website is according to search engines. The higher the better, making it easy to track and measure.

Getting one link each from ten different domains is better than getting ten links from one. This means more websites mentioning you increases your credibility.

The quality of websites that link to you matters. Getting a backlink from the New York Times is better than an ordinary blog that started last month.

The kind of visitors you get can tell you if you're mentioned on the right website under the right anchor text. If visitors click on your link but leave soon afterward, you need to rethink your strategy.

To calculate the time it will take to improve your site's desirable ranking, setting realistic goals is key. This means not expecting to rank at the top of the SERPs within a month if you've just started your website.

Here are some factors that determine how fast your domain rating will increase:

Dwell time is a crucial metric to measure the success of your website. It's the amount of time visitors spend on your page after clicking on it.

The quality of traffic the source site gets plays a significant role in dwell time. If the source site doesn't get good visitors, it's likely that your page won't either.

A well-crafted anchor text is essential for grabbing the reader's attention and encouraging them to click on your page. If it's just a random selection of words, it's more likely to get skipped over.

The freshness of the source page is another important factor. New pages get more traffic and higher dwell time than old ones, so make sure you're getting backlinks from articles that are no more than six months old.

Here's a quick rundown of the factors that affect dwell time:

Measuring the number of backlinks is a crucial aspect of assessing your online presence.

The number of backlinks you receive depends on two main factors: how aggressively you pursue new links and the quality of your content.

If your content is valuable, authentic, and actionable, it will attract links naturally.

To check the number of backlinks, you can use tools like Link Explorer by Moz, Free Backlink Checker by Ahrefs, or Backlink Checker by Small SEO tools.

Here are some popular tools for checking backlinks:

To boost the number of backlinks, you can scale up your link-building efforts or try a new tactic.