SaaS or software-as-a-service-business model has become quite popular over the years. No wonder there are over 30,000 SaaS companies in the world, and the majority hail from the United States (over 17,000). While the growing number of SaaS businesses is a good sign, it makes it hard for new players to enter and succeed in this highly competitive market.
Therefore, SaaS businesses need to take every opportunity to stand out in the crowd and maximize their growth. And that’s when SaaS link-building comes in. With an effective link-building strategy, SaaS companies can boost their search engine ranking, drive more traffic to their website, improve brand visibility, and convert more customers.
In this blog, we’ll discuss what SaaS link building is, why it is important (benefits), and the top strategies that SaaS businesses can use to leverage link building. So, read in full.
What is SaaS Link Building?
SaaS link building is an effective SEO tactic that involves acquiring links or backlinks to your website from other high-authority websites in your niche.
Let’s say you sell accounting software. If a website that compares multiple accounting software lists your software solution and adds a link that redirects readers to your website, you can call it a backlink. The process of acquiring this backlink is known as link building.
SaaS link building is all about creating quality content that publishers and bloggers value. Examples include blogs, articles, case studies, e-books, product comparisons, content related to features, customer surveys, etc. The more value you provide, the easier it is to get backlinks from high-authority sources and drive relevant traffic to your website.
Why is Link Building for SaaS Important (Benefits)?
Here’s why SaaS link-building is important:
Visibility and Organic Traffic
SaaS link-building can help improve your SaaS product’s visibility and increase website traffic. For instance, a SaaS brand, Toast, was able to grow its traffic to over 600,00 monthly through SEO, content marketing, and link profile growth.
Domain Authority and Credibility
If you’re getting backlinks from high authority websites, your website’s DA can improve over time. And this boosts your credibility in the eyes of both Google and visitors.
Reputation and Sales
If your referring domain or website offering you a backlink is high authority, it’ll boost your reputation and the click-through rate. How? Well, when visitors are on a high-quality website with a high DA, they naturally trust it. If that website sends visitors to you, they’ll automatically consider your website more credible. And this will increase the chances of you booking demos or making sales.
16 Powerful SaaS Link-Building Techniques
1. Contextual Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is crafting and publishing a high-quality article/blog on a website relevant to your niche in exchange for a backlink.
However, you should focus on contextual guest blogging. Contextual guest blogging is when the content you craft is relevant to the context of the content where it’s hyperlinked.
Let’s say you’re an accounting SaaS company. You craft a blog about the benefits of accounting SaaS solutions and list case studies. Now, hyperlinking to a case study on your website would be relevant to the context of the content you wrote. This is termed contextual guest blogging, and the link you acquire will be a contextual link.
Contextual links help build better domain authority, attract more relevant & organic traffic, and boost your search engine ranking.
However, if you write a blog where you define accounting and its importance and forcefully link your SaaS solution, it’ll count as a non-contextual link. These links often have a poor conversion rate.
2. Unlinked Brand Mentions
When a brand mentions your brand on its website without providing a link back to your website, it’s termed as an unlinked brand mention. While a brand mentioning your brand improves your value in the eyes of search engines, a backlink can take it to the next level.
So, SaaS companies should identify these hidden opportunities and politely ask the author of the website to provide you with a backlink.
To find the unlinked brand mentions, you can use a tool such as BuzzSumo. You can simply set alerts for your brand’s name, and almost instantly, you’ll get a list of blogs and forums that mention your brand name. You can then request them to add a link back to your website.
3. Niche Edits
Niche edits involve placing your link in an already published blog. The motive here is to take advantage of the SEO value the content/page has gained over time and drive quality traffic to your website.
Let’s say you sell a SaaS product that helps online merchants accept payments. Now, you can find high authority blogs with titles such as “Top SaaS products for accepting payments,” etc. Once you have the list of blogs, you can approach the publishers and ask them to integrate your product as well. And when they do, you get yourself a high authority backlink.
Bloggers or publishers are often happy to accept niche edits as they get a chance to offer additional resources to their readers without having to write a content piece from scratch.
Pro Tip: A great way to make the most of this link-building strategy is by creating shareable content such as infographics. For instance, an infographic that demonstrates the importance of SaaS payment solutions for merchants could be really helpful for the audience. Infographics often add more value to the content piece, increasing the chances of being accepted in exchange for a backlink.
4. Podcast
Appearing on podcasts is an amazing way of generating backlinks to your website. The majority of podcasts these days come in a video format, and these videos are published on YouTube. So, it’s highly likely that the host will link your website in their video’s title or description.
Moreover, podcast hosts often have a website where they publish the podcast in a blog format. Here again, they can link back to your website, boosting your backlink profile.
Pro Tip: Talking about your product or related topics in general is way easier than guest posting. Also, appearing in podcasts boosts your reach dramatically, considering the recent rise in popularity of podcasts across platforms.
5. CEO Interviews
Several websites on the internet interview CEOs of organizations and either publish a YouTube video, a detailed blog, or both, giving you a backlink. You can approach such websites or organizations and ask if they’d like to interview your CEO. Examples of the websites you can approach include CEO Magazine, Chief Executive Magazine, etc.
6. Broken links
A broken link is a hyperlink that points the users to a resource or page that doesn’t exist. And Google hates broken links from an SEO perspective. However, you can use this to your advantage. How?
Well, you can find websites in your niche with broken links and create a content piece that is relevant to the URL. You can then approach the author of the website and ask them to link your content piece instead. They’ll happily agree, in most cases, as they’re getting an issue fixed for free.
Pro Tip: Use Ahrefs Site Explorer to identify broken links. Just put your URL (of a relevant website in your niche) in the Site Explorer, go to the “Backlink” report, and click “Broken .”This will give you the broken URLs for that domain.
7. Resource Link Building
Resource link building is the process of building backlinks from pages that have a list of links to external websites or resource pages.
Let’s say you have a payroll SaaS product. An ideal resource page would be one that lists the top 10 or top 50 payroll SaaS products. If your product can add value to the list of resources, the author would be happy to mention your product and a link back to your website.
Pro Tip: It’s relatively easy to find resource pages for SaaS companies. A great way to start your search is by using this search operator intitle:{your keyword} and (intitle: best OR intitle: resource OR intitle: top). This will give you a list of the resource pages related to your niche.
8. Competitor Backlink Analysis
Competitor backlink analysis is not a SaaS link-building technique per se, but it can make your efforts more effective and precise. It involves analyzing the backlink profile of your competitors, identifying their backlinks and referring websites, and replicating the same to rank better.
Pro Tip: Using SEMrush Backlink Competitors report, you can easily identify your rival domains and their competition levels. Also, you can use the Backlink Gap Tool from SEMrush to determine how your backlink profile stacks up against your competitors.
9. Conferences
Conferences are an amazing way to not only earn backlinks but also improve your overall brand visibility and reputation. Often, online and offline conferences are looking for quality speakers to contribute. You can approach such conferences and register a senior employee of your organization as the speaker.
Pro Tip: Make sure you approach the conferences that’ll link the video/blog after the event back to your website. After all, that’s how you get a backlink.
10. Forum Sites
Yet another way of SaaS link building is by actively engaging and posting content on forum websites with large communities. You can find a SaaS forum or a community that talks about products related to your niche and start answering their queries or posting content, wherein you can smartly insert your backlink.
Common Q&A platforms include Quora and Reddit. And SaaS forums you can check out are SaaStock, SaaS Insider, and S11S.
11. Help A Reporter Out (HARO)
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is an effective way of building SaaS backlinks. Basically, HARO is a platform where journalists, individuals, and businesses post queries/requirements, asking for statistics, information, or perspectives for the articles they’re crafting.
You just need to sign up on HARO, and you’ll start getting emails relevant to your niche. You can respond to the queries if you find something you can contribute to. And if your contribution is valuable enough, the journalists will accept it and quote you in the article, providing you with a backlink.
12. Trend Reports
Trend reports are a unique way of SaaS link building. You create and publish trend-based content and reports on your website. The goal here is to create a value bomb that includes interviews with industry leaders and case studies and mentions top brands relevant to your niche that journalists would love to cover.
In most cases, you’ll start to see journalists or publishers linking back to your website. However, to improve the effectiveness of this process, you can approach the brands or industry leaders you mentioned in the report. They’d be more than happy to mention your report in their blog, giving you a backlink. After all, this gives them a chance to brag and win the trust of their customers/investors.
13. Press Release
A press release is a short piece of content that shares an interesting, newsworthy story with the goal of getting picked up by news publishing websites. You can introduce a new feature, product, event, or campaign, offer expert insights on a trending topic, or share the news about securing funding or a merger, etc.
Once you have the press release ready, you can approach the news websites that publish press releases in your niche. Popular examples include Presswire, Pr.com, etc.
14. Product Reviews
Product reviews are an amazing tactic not only for SaaS link building but also for building social proof and trust among your customers. A large number of product reviews means numerous people have tried your product. And this sends positive signals to the minds of potential buyers, making conversions easier.
For product review link building, you need to approach bloggers who write in your niche and offer them a free trial (1-3 months) of your SaaS product. In exchange, you can then ask them to write a detailed review within 2-3 weeks after they gain access to your tool.
Pro Tip: This method requires almost no effort and brings several benefits, including better search ranking (if reviews include keywords), more trust among potential customers, and, of course, quality backlinks.
15. Influencer Outreach
Influencer outreach is quite an uncommon link-building tactic for SaaS products. After all, you won’t find creators discussing SaaS payroll or accounting solutions as frequently as those promoting beauty products. However, it still is effective.
You need to find relevant influencers in the SaaS industry who talk about products like yours and have a decent following. You can then pay them or offer your product’s subscription for free for a few months in exchange for a video/post where they mention or review your product. They can then add a link back to your website, serving the purpose.
16. Social Media and Content Promotion
Creating high-quality content (videos, articles, blogs, infographics, carousels, text-based posts) and prompting it on social media is a brilliant SaaS link-building technique.
All you have to do is consistently create shareable and valuable content and post/promote the same on social media. As your accounts reach across platforms grows, so will the engagement, increasing the chances of your content being shared. And every share gives you a backlink.
Pro Tip: Create content that is interesting, establishes you as a thought leader, and solves problems for your potential customers. This will help increase the number of shares or engagements you get.
How do Link Publishers Help in SaaS link building?
Link Publishers is a guest post marketplace that can help you with SaaS link building. And they do this by leveraging the power of guest posting services.
With over 60,000 websites under their belt in multiple niches, Link Publishers allows you to buy as many high-quality guest posts as you wish. All you’ve got to do is:
Even if you don’t have a blog, Link Publishers has a team of native writers. They can craft a quality article for you that you can upload and buy guest posts.
The best part? Link Publishers follow white-hat SEO tactics. And all websites are genuine and not a part of private blog networks. So, when you partner with Link Publishers, you can expect Google-friendly link-building services only.
Want to try Link Publishers’ guest post marketplace for SaaS link building? Create a free account and get started right away.
FAQs
Which SAAS link-building strategy works best?
There are numerous SaaS link-building strategies that you can rely on, including:
Roundups
Product Reviews
HARO
Press Releases
And more.
However, a link-building technique that is particularly effective is buying quality guest posts from a guest posting marketplace. Why? Buying guest posts saves you time and effort and has a 100% success rate. You choose the right website, upload the content, pay, and you have your backlink. This lets you get as many backlinks as possible while focusing on your core operations.
How does Google view link building for SaaS businesses?
As far as Google is concerned, it values natural link-building for SaaS businesses, i.e., white hat link-building tactics such as guest blogging, niche edits, etc. When your SaaS website gets backlinks from high-authority websites, Google perceives your website as valuable, credible, and trustworthy, which boosts your ranking.
However, if you try any link-building techniques that Google terms “link schemes,” Google’s algorithm will identify it sooner or later, reducing your credibility.
How can I get started with SaaS link building today?
You can follow any of the above-mentioned SaaS link-building techniques to get started. However, for quick and more effective results, you can buy guest posts from Link Publishers’ guest posting marketplace. There are plenty of high authority options to choose from, and the process is pretty fast. So much so that you can get your guest post published within 30-32 hours.
