As a SaaS company, you know that digital marketing and link building is essential to your success.
It’s one of the most powerful ways to get in front of your customer base, build trust with prospects and increase credibility.
Having your brand associated with the right type of links will position you as an authority and thought leader, which is exactly what you want.
Your customers need to trust you, your product and the claims you make about it.
And since Google also uses links as a ranking signal, it’s essential that you receive natural links from trusted sources.
By implementing a strategic link-building campaign, you’ll be seen as an authority in your field and drive more traffic to your site.
So if you’re looking to increase your site rankings, drive more traffic, and be an industry leader, you’ll want to consider adding a backlink acquisition plan to your marketing strategy.
Understandably, it can be hard to understand how backlinks are beneficial if you don’t have a clear understanding of what they are and how to acquire them.
If that sounds like you, keep reading!
Why is Link-Building Essential For SaaS Companies?
There are many reasons why building a solid backlink profile is essential for SaaS companies – The most compelling reason is that it helps increase site rankings and visibility.
Increased site rankings and visibility
When search engines crawl your website, one way they determine where on their list of results your page should show up is by looking at which sites link back to yours.
The more quality links pointing towards your site means the higher chance you have of being listed in Google’s top 3 results for relevant keywords or phrases.
This will help drive more traffic to your website from potential customers who may not know about you otherwise!
Builds authority as a thought leader
Backlinks from highly reputable and authoritative websites can help increase your SaaS company’s authority, bring in quality referral traffic and make you an industry leader.
And when you are seen as an expert in your field, it builds trust with potential customers and helps increase sales in the long run.
Building backlinks is a great way to position yourself and your website as thought leaders in your industry.
Higher conversions
Another great benefit of link building is that it can help you achieve higher conversions.
When potential customers see your brand rank well in search results, they’ll have more confidence in your product and are likely to convert.
Organic links are the best way to make sure your audience sees you as an authority figure in their eyes.
The more people trust your brand, the more likely they are to convert.
So if you’re looking to take your digital marketing strategy up a notch, consider adding backlink acquisition to the mix.
It could make all the difference for your business.
How Hard is Link Building For SaaS Companies?
Link building for SaaS companies can be challenging, as it usually requires more effort than other types of digital marketing.
In order to earn natural links from reputable sources.
You need to think about what your target audience is looking for and how you can provide valuable information.
You don’t want your users to see your website as just another one vying for their attention.
Instead, you want it to be seen as useful and informative.
That means providing valuable, high-quality content that answers your visitors’ questions or solves their problems.
When you provide this type of value to visitors, they’ll want to link back to your site, which will help drive more conversions and increase site rankings.
Let’s take a look at some examples of how some SaaS brands are using content to acquire more backlinks and grow their audience.
Top 3 Brands Using SEO Link Building to Crush Their Competition
HubSpot Blog
Hubspot is widely considered the undisputed king of inbound marketing (from an SEO standpoint).
They have built their audience, brand authority, and global presence by placing an emphasis on valuable content creation.
Their content strategy focuses on producing high-quality educational content that guides marketers to better understand different types of inbound marketing strategies.
Because of their great content creation strategy, HubSpot has managed to rank for very competitive keywords such as:
- Marketing
- Advertisement
- Brand Guide
- CRM
- Inbound Marketing
By creating and sharing great educational content, HubSpot has built a reputation as an authority on all things inbound marketing.
In the process of building great content, they’ve also received a number of backlinks from a variety of different sources.
The large number of links to their site has helped drive up their overall SEO rankings and increased both traffic and leads for the company.
Through their content marketing and backlink building efforts, their organic traffic currently sits at 1.7 million monthly visits according to Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest by Neil Patel
If you’re not familiar with Ubersuggest, it’s one of the best keyword research tools available today.
Neil Patel purchased Ubersuggest in 2017 for $120,000. At the time, the KW research tool was generating around 100,000 unique visitors every month with almost 40k backlinks from 8k referring domains.
After acquiring Ubersuggest, he swiftly integrated the tool into his popular blog NeilPatel.com
He then released the Ubersuggest tool to the public for FREE as an experiment to see if he could grow his website traffic from 3 million visitors a month to 4 million.
AND IT WORKED.
His experiment paid off, and many users fell in love with his tool because he offers a powerful SEO keyword research tool for FREE to business owners and digital marketers.
Neil Patel believed that having a free version is important for many reasons.
One reason that it’s an effective marketing strategy is that his product became widely distributed through users and marketers who loved his product and began promoting it for him.
Meaning free backlinks and organic traffic!
And, by offering your tool for free, you’re able to showcase how much value you can provide so that your users will eventually upgrade to the paid version.
The key takeaway from this short case study is that the right SaaS product can be a gateway to millions of customers if positioned correctly into a link building strategy.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the most popular tools for SEO professionals to discover, plan, and analyze all things backlinks.
The Ahrefs blog is the perfect example of how powerful content marketing can be for getting backlinks and organic traffic to your site.
Their blog posts are largely focused on sharing actionable tips that their customers will find valuable – i.e., link building strategies that they can implement right away.
Their website has 143 million backlinks and has close to 80,000 referring domains. Just the term “ahrefs” itself is currently pulling in 287,000 searches a month.
This comes to show that they’re able to leverage link building strategies to rank their SaaS product highly on Google.
So how can you do the same?
How to Drive Organic Traffic for SaaS Companies
First, let’s cover a few basics!
If you’re looking to build SaaS backlinks, here are some things that you should keep in mind.
1. Your Content Must Be Relevant
You always want to create content that adds value as opposed to creating short 500-word blog posts just for the sake of creating a blog post.
The content you share must be actionable – this is where you want to create content that your customers will find valuable.
And, if possible, your content should provide evergreen tips, linkable assets or advice so that it’ll continue to drive traffic and leads for years to come.
2. You Should Focus on One Content Type
It’s unlikely that you’ll find success with creating one blog post and expecting it to rank for a wide range of keywords.
There are different types of content that will help you rank for different keywords. Videos work well if your target keyword is “how-to”, infographics work great if the keywords are visual, etc.
Instead of focusing on creating a variety of content, you should focus your efforts on creating one type of content that you can grow and expand over time.
3. Get Links from Relevant Sources
What’s the point in trying to get backlinks from blogs that have nothing to do with your industry?
It won’t help you at all.
Instead, focus on guest blogging for blogs that are closely related to your industry.
This will help you grow the backlinks to your website and improve SEO rankings for keywords that are relevant to your product or service.
4. Get Links from Authority Sites
One of the best ways to grow backlinks is by getting links from trusted sources for your industry.
These sites tend to rank highly on Google’s search engine, so they’re able to send powerful authoritative SEO signals.
The more backlinks you get from these authoritative sources, the better it’ll be for your site.
White Hat Link Building Strategies for SaaS Companies
Guest posting
Guest posting is considered to be one of the biggest white hat link building strategies for SaaS companies.
This strategy involves getting backlinks from reputable sites by writing valuable content that adds value to their audience.
The more valuable your guest post is, the more likely it’ll get shared on social media and get picked up by search engines.
Of course, you should follow proper guest blogging guidelines and not simply spam your content just because it might get backlinks.
If done properly, you will see huge ROI from guest posting and contribute to building more traffic and leads for your site.
Creating resources pages
Some of the best content on the internet comes in the form of resource pages.
These are informational pieces that teach you something valuable, usually by providing helpful information or tools for your use.
Some examples of resource pages are listicles, reports, case studies, or even ebooks.
There are a number of benefits to creating resource pages:
- People love reading and sharing them.
- They’re relatively easy to create, even as part of an existing content strategy.
- They can be used to get quality links from other sites through an outreach campaign.
Backlink exchange
As the name suggests, with a backlink exchange you’re trading relevant backlinks with another site in order to gain more backlinks for your website.
The idea is very straightforward, but the process does take some work and time.
You’ll first want to find a blog that has the potential of linking to you.
There are various platforms out there that can help you determine which sites might be good fits for your content.
Once you’ve identified a site, you’ll need to reach out and make some connections with those running the blog.
After building up some rapport, you’ll be able to pitch your content ideas and hope for a positive response.
It may take several emails or content pitches before you get a yes, so don’t give up too quickly.
Reaching out to unlinked brand mentions
Another great way to get inbound links for your website is by reaching out to blogs that have mentioned your brand or products but didn’t give you a link.
Since these sites are already talking about your company, it makes sense to reach out and ask them to include a link in their content.
Simply type in your brand name into Google to find potential brand mentions.
Take a look at the results and determine whether or not each site has mentioned your company or products.
If you’ve found a relevant mention, reach out to the author and ask for a link back to your site.
Broken link building
Broken link building is a popular SEO technique that involves finding broken links on high domain authority sites and then offering a relevant replacement.
This type of backlink building can be done by using an SEO software such as Ahrefs or Ubersuggest to identify relevant opportunities.
Once you’ve identified a broken link, reach out to the person who runs the site and let them know about the broken resource.
Include a link to a relevant replacement that would be beneficial for their audience.
When done properly, this can be an easy way to get quality backlinks.
Directory Submissions
The majority of business directories are community-based, meaning that you can create an account and post your site for free.
Most directories have a basic listing option where you provide some general information about your website.
You should definitely include this type of directory submission in your SEO strategy.
If you’re willing to spend some cash on directory submissions, there are a number of high quality paid directories that might work for your site.
When done properly, directory submissions can provide a steady stream of quality backlinks.
Guest podcasting in your industry
Podcasting is becoming more and more popular, which makes it an excellent platform to get your brand in front of a new audience.
Many podcasts are more than willing to do a guest interview, especially if you’re able to provide them with insightful information that’s related to their overall topic.
When reaching out to podcast hosts, make sure you find one that’s related to your industry.
For example, if your business sells B2B software, consider reaching out to specific business podcasts in the same niche.
If they like what you have to say (and you promote them), there’s a good chance that they’ll give you a link on their site.
Once you’ve attracted some attention with your podcasting efforts, you’ll find it easier to land guest interviews in the future.
Skyscraper Technique
Although not a link building tactic, the Skyscraper Technique can be used in conjunction with traditional backlink building efforts.
The idea is to come up with an epic piece of content with linkable assets that will attract links on its own.
This type of content is typically very helpful for the audience and shows that you’re willing to go the extra mile to provide value.
Once you’ve created your epic piece of content. Spread the word about it across social media and various guest blogging platforms.
This should generate some backlinks for your website.
Market your SaaS product on AppSumo
AppSumo is a marketplace that lets you purchase different digital products for very low prices.
For the most part, products sold on AppSumo are typically software related and range from SEO tools to productivity apps.
There’s an excellent chance that your SaaS product could be featured on AppSumo. If you reach out to them with a compelling offer.
When done properly, getting your product featured on AppSumo can help you grow your audience and generate some high-quality backlinks.
Furthermore, AppSumo is a platform that’s targeted towards tech-savvy business owners. This means that their subscribers are likely to be early adopters of your SaaS product!
Many SaaS companies have found success using AppSumo to generate backlinks and grow their audience.
So this strategy is definitely worth a shot.
The Bottom Line
Establishing a solid backlink strategy is an important part of SEO and building your SaaS brand.
Although link building is certainly more challenging for SaaS companies, it’s definitely possible with the right approach.
When done properly, you can build a steady stream of quality backlinks that will bring in new customers.
And help establish your business as an authority in your industry.
If you need help with link building for your SaaS company, feel free to reach out to us at Goldie Agency.
We specialize in helping SaaS companies grow through SEO link building and would be happy to answer any questions you might have about link building, online advertising, etc.
We currently offer a FREE strategy session for all new clients, so feel free to contact us today!
