In this article, we’ll talk about link building — one of the methods of promoting a SaaS business. This tool increases domain authority, improves website visibility in search results, and boosts organic traffic. Let’s figure out what benefits it provides, what mistakes to avoid, and what techniques will help you succeed.  

The Basics of Link Building in SaaS

Link building implies placing links to a certain website on external resources. Its main goal is to increase the authority of the domain from the point of view of search engines by emphasizing the usefulness, popularity, and veracity of the content posted on its pages. Along with keyword optimization, link building is one of the key SEO tools. 

Promoting SaaS services through links has its own unique advantages:

• Most companies operating in this field provide high-tech services that are in demand among professionals. This makes it much easier to choose topics for creating high-quality content – they are usually easily accessible, and you just have to choose one of them.

Source: https://www.saasacademy.com/hs-fs/hubfs/shutterstock_1543490102.jpg?width=7500&name=shutterstock_1543490102.jpg

• Business in this area always relies on data and statistics. You can turn them into interesting research. Users will share it without any additional motivation — just leave a few links on niche resources such as forums and social media communities.
• When talking about how to solve a particular problem, you can give detailed instructions on how to use your service. Such unobtrusive advertising will bring you many customers who are ready to pay and perform a conversion. 

But before you start, you should consider the disadvantages. First of all, it is the complexity of the topics: to write a high-quality article, a copywriter will have to work together with an expert. Secondly, it is a niche audience with unique preferences that you should adapt to. Thirdly, it is a limited list of resources where you can post content with a link. 

Nevertheless, most companies promote their SaaS services with the help of link building. Whatever the disadvantages, the results always outweigh them. Let’s talk about them in more detail. 

Benefits of Link Building for SaaS Companies

The key result of link building will be a step towards the Google EEAT formula. In this formula, we are interested in the letter A, i.e. domain authoritativeness. Through link building, you demonstrate that people are willing to share your content and recommend it to their website visitors. As a result, you can get:

• better visibility in search results;
• more organic traffic;
• improved conversion and customer retention rates;
• higher profitability of contextual advertising;
• greater coverage of the target audience;
• enhanced reputation, image of an opinion leader.

By building link networks, you will also gain valuable contacts that can help you grow your business in the future. In addition, some links placed on reputable sites will attract paying visitors without search engines. 

One of the best examples of successful link building in the SaaS field is Databricks, an online analytics company. It activated building a link network in early 2023 and received tangible positive results. The graph below shows a strong correlation between the number of linked domains and the volume of organic traffic. 

Source: https://artimg.info/blog/upload/elfinder/blog_EN/link-building-saas/databricks-ahrefs.png

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Before diving into link building details, you should understand what you should and shouldn’t do. In this section, we have collected the most frequently failed strategies that can drag your business to the bottom.

1. Automated link building

Yes, robotic link farms exist today. But most of them are blacklisted by Google. Using their services, you will really get a large number of links that will work against you, lowering your domain ranking.

Of course, there are also “white” link exchanges that hire experienced writers to create high-quality content and publish it manually on carefully selected sites. Cooperation with them will be really fruitful and useful for your business.  

2. Spamming with links

When you find a high-quality resource, you are always tempted to post as much content with links as possible. But you should keep in mind that search engine algorithms quickly track such attempts to improve your rankings. As a result, the credibility of both domains — yours and the one that agrees to post a large number of articles — decreases. 

Instead of spamming, it’s better to spend time looking for additional platforms for publishing. Focus on long-term cooperation — this will make link building easier in the future. 

3. Poor quality of content

A fairly large percentage of articles for link building are written for robots, not people. So why make extra efforts? Some website owners order such content from copywriters with the lowest qualifications or even generate it with the help of AI. But Google’s algorithms take into account the text quality — if it is written solely according to SEO requirements and does not contain valuable information, its impact on your reputation will be negative. 

Yes, articles for placing external links should not necessarily be literary masterpieces. Still, you should include at least some interesting, useful, and new information in them. Remember that quality is more important than quantity in link building. 

4. Fraud

There is a constant “arms race” between webmasters and search engines. The latter are continuously improving their algorithms. Currently, they can withstand the following dubious promotion methods:

• hidden links (not highlighted in a different color);
• links with anchors that do not correspond to the website’s topic;
• hidden text that merges with the background;
• multiple repetitions of the same anchors;
• keyword spam.

Source: https://sitechecker.pro/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/spam-link.png

Avoid black-hat and gray-hat SEO methods, even if you are assured that they will work no matter what. Yes, you will indeed get the desired effect, but only until the search engine detects a violation and applies penalties against your website. 

Effective Link-building Techniques are Completely Legal

There are many ways to place external links. They can be individual for each company depending on the nature of its business and product features. Let’s take a look at the main link-building tools.

1. Guest posts

There are many websites that host content from other authors. The conditions can be different: payment per article or a thousand characters, mutual promotion, discounts on company services, etc. When all the details are agreed upon, you write or order an article in which you place a link. It is moderated and then published on the website. 

Important: choose sites that are relevant to the topic of the article and your line of business. If the donor site does not meet these requirements, the value of the link will be zero. 

2. Reports and statistics

To increase the value of your content, you should provide expert opinion or statistics in it, making sure to mention the author of the study. Take on the role of an expert — publish interesting information that will be useful to other authors. Links to it will benefit both sites, increasing the level of authority of their domains.

Source: https://assets.affilimate.com/blog/product-roundup/buyers-guide-example.png

Important: to be referred to, your statistics must be accessible. Optimize the pages with your research and share links on relevant resources. 

3. Reviews and testimonials

One of the best ways to naturally insert a link into your text is to post a review of your product on another resource. You can contact bloggers and experts, as well as publish testimonials on special review platforms. And remember the power of social media — its role in SEO and link building is constantly growing.

Source: https://www.rockethub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Screen-Shot-2021-12-14-at-01.42.31.png

Important: Testimonials, reviews, and mentions on social media should look as natural as possible. It’s better not to write them yourself but to motivate your customers to share them. 

4. Restore broken links

Link building is not always about creating new content. It is quite possible that an article on the topic you need already exists. It was created by another company, but the link in it is broken for some reason. All you have to do is contact the site administrator and offer cooperation. Restoring broken links is beneficial for both parties because they do not have to make significant efforts. 

Source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/link-reclamation-facebook-1.jpg

Important: even if you are satisfied with the article, it is better to check and edit it. It is necessary to remove all mentions of competitors from it and update the information. 

5. Search for brand mentions

If you have already passed the product development stage and have a certain user base, chances are your company is being discussed on the Internet. The only thing left to do is to find out where exactly and offer to place a link. Special tools for monitoring brand mentions, such as Mention, Locobuzz, and Awario, will help you with this.  

Source: https://neilpatel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/image11.jpg

Important: of course, positive mentions will be valuable to you. But negative ones shouldn’t be ignored either — contact the authors and find out how you can remove them. 

Advanced Link-building Strategies for SaaS

The advantage of the general-purpose methods we described in the previous section is that they work in almost every industry. But they also have a disadvantage: they don’t take into account the specifics of a particular industry and, therefore, are not always highly effective. So it’s also worth considering SaaS-specific strategies. 

The ‘Skyscraper’ method

This approach implies that you have to search the Internet for low-quality content in your field. When you see such articles, you can suggest that the site administrator replace them with your content — meaningful, interesting, and optimized. They will get better SEO metrics and conversion rates, and you will get a link to your website. 

Source: https://snov.io/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/1618402629.png

Outreach

One of the features of the tech industry is that many websites are ready to share high-quality content but do not tell the general public about it. So how do you get your articles published on their pages? Contact the administrators directly. Of course, you can use email to write personalized letters. However, the best results come from requests in specialized communities on Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Source: https://www.voilanorbert.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/word-image-58.png

Crowd marketing

If you want to make your SaaS service popular, reach out to people and help them solve their problems. Look for relevant Reddit threads and Quora questions. But be careful. First, you need to give a meaningful answer, consult the person, and make sure they are satisfied. And only then can you share the link, if appropriate. Avoid outright self-promotion — it will worsen the company’s reputation and may cause your account to be blocked.  

Source: https://getmentioned.today/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/3_reddit_backlinks.png

Applying a Link-building Strategy for a SaaS Business

You should understand that link building is a long and complex process that requires a comprehensive approach and strategic vision. And yet, you don’t have to be an SEO guru to start this work and get positive results. SaaS link building can be represented as the following sequence of actions:

1. Investigation of search requests. Identify key requests for which your website will be promoted in search engines. 
2. Keyword research. The modern approach to SEO involves the use of low-, medium-, and high-frequency keywords as part of one strategy. 
3. Competitor monitoring. It is important to understand in which areas other companies promote their resources, what platforms they use, and how effective their strategies are. 
4. Your website audit. If you have been operating for some time, it is likely that links to your website already exist. It is worth evaluating their quantity and quality. 
5. Search for sites for effective link building. You can rely on competitor audit data, expert advice, popularity ratings of niche blogs, or even your preferences. But remember that you will need to check the authority of each domain. 
6. Setting up analytics. It is very important to track the effectiveness of your efforts. You can use specialized web services like Serpstat, Ahrefs, or Moz. 
7. Adjusting decisions. No one can avoid mistakes and problems. By tracking them, you can change your strategy and improve your results. 
8. Diagnostics and recovery. Links are lost over time, whether due to problems on your website or with the donor. You need to promptly address such issues, restoring links and preventing a drop in rankings.  

Summing up

Building credibility is one of the key tasks for SaaS companies. It increases the credibility of their product among the target audience and improves the website’s visibility in search engines. One of the key methods of working in this direction is link building. 

Building a network of external links requires a strategic approach. To succeed, you need to build a clear plan — define goals, methods, and terms of promotion. A monitoring and analytics system will be an essential element of the strategy. It will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts and make informed decisions based on data.