If you run a SaaS tool, then you must be aware of this painful truth: You are building a tool that performs excellently, but you can’t create any backlinks, and Google doesn’t notice you exist. Because” backlinks are the fuel of the site”. So, almost every SaaS startup eventually asks this question: How to get backlinks for a SaaS tool? A few years ago, I worked with a SaaS startup CEO who launched a SaaS automation tool with an excellent GUI, amazing features, and a clear problem-solving tool. But the site is stuck on page 4, where there is no traffic, it’s quiet, and it’s forgotten.
He wasn’t losing ranking. He lost sign-ups, trials, revenue, and investor confidence because he couldn’t build any SaaS link building, which in turn affected their rankings, website reputation, and traffic.
Many marketers and SaaS startups struggle to build effective link-building strategies, often confused by misconceptions about link quality, outreach, outdated tactics, and ROI measurement.
In this article, I’ll provide an ultimate guide to getting backlinks for SaaS startups that struggle to build authority for their tools and beat the competition. I’m not going to give you basic information to write great content; I’ll give you real, proven tactics to promote your SaaS tool in a competitive market through SaaS link building, which is packed with
Practical outreach templates
Proven SaaS backlink strategies
Affordable tool
Benchmark how many backlinks your tool needs?
Let’s discover it
What is SaaS link building?
SaaS link building is the process by which a website earns high-quality links from reputable websites to improve its rankings, brand reputation, credibility, SEO impact, and visibility in the Software-as-a-Service product space.
When you get high-quality do-follow backlinks, Google sees it as a confidence vote that this site is credible, reliable, and a valuable product. It means your ranking increases, and more people sign up for the tool.
How to get backlinks for SaaS tools?
Getting backlinks for SaaS sites is difficult for startups. Still, it seems smooth when you create linkable quality, linkable content, such as reports, templates, a free tools list, and competitor backlink targeting. Get into top listicles, build integration, outreach, guest post strategies, and partnership with quality SaaS sites, and also offer experts’ insights through HARO. These tactics help you improve website rankings, drive more traffic, and sign up for your tools.
In the next session of this article, I discuss these SaaS backlink strategies in more depth for your understanding.
What makes SaaS link building different?
SaaS link building isn’t as simple as traditional link building; that’s why generic link-building strategies fail for startups. It acquires links from B2B sites for its tool, which has the relevant audience. Unlike e-commerce and blogging sites, SaaS products operate in a fast-moving, highly competitive environment that requires greater trust and authority than mere link volume. SaaS products need Google’s trust for people to use them.
The Differences between SaaS and Traditional Link Building?
Repeat Models, Feature Updates, and Rapid Competition.
SaaS products are in constant flux, with new features, UI changes, integrations, and pricing changes.
It implies that SaaS businesses will need to continue acquiring new, topical backlinks to retain rankings and remain visible in a rapidly evolving market.
The same things cannot be said of generic evergreen content; SaaS link building requires continuous content updates and dynamic resources.
More Lengthy Buyer Process – Trust-Heavy Content.
SaaS subscribers do not make purchases immediately. They compare tools, provide reviews, analyze prices, and offer free trials. Given the importance of trust, backlinks should appear on credible, industry-relevant websites, not on random blogs.
It is due to this that SaaS link-building strategies give much attention to:
- Data-backed content
- Expert insights
- Integration partnerships
- Trustworthy sources on the industry.
Competing with Domains of High Authority
Leaders in SaaS SERP are HubSpot, Zapier, Notion, Atlassian, and Adobe: 80-95 DA brands.
To have a chance, SaaS startups need to establish topical authority, not just a few backlinks.
This does not refer only to slowly gaining links to product pages, feature pages, and use-case content, but also to blogs.
The reasons why Backlinks are more critical to SaaS Startups.
Rankings – Trials – Signups – Revenue.
In the case of SaaS companies, SEO does not only concern traffic, but it has a direct connection to conversions:
- A greater ranking attracts better visitors.
- The more visitors, the more free trials.
- More trials = more paid users
This is why quality backlinks drive quantifiable business growth for SaaS tools.
Backlinks Enhance Topical Authority and minimise CAC.
The high backlink portfolio contributes to the fact that you are less dependent on:
- Paid ads
- PPC campaigns
- High-cost acquisition channels.
This will directly reduce CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) and increase organic visibility.
Clear Benchmark for SaaS ranking
If your product has low competition, include the long-tail keywords and build 5-20 backlinks.
If you are in the middle tier, then you need 40-100+ backlinks for the rankings.
If you face high competition and commercial tools, you need 150-300+ backlinks to overcome them.
Proven SaaS link-building strategy That Actually moves rankings
In the link-building statistics, 89.0% of Link-building Specialists see spammy outbound links as the major red flag. Poor link building harms ranking. So, spammy and low-quality links are no longer an option for link building after Google’s recent updates. Earning editorial, contextual, high-authority links through assets, partnerships, and guest posts on quality, growing SaaS sites actually matters. Below are the most effective, reliable, higher ROI-driven SaaS link-building strategies that move rankings.
1. Create data-driven content that people naturally link to
Your SaaS tool is new, but you have a lot of information bout the industry. So, you create content that people naturally link to. Data is the most linkable content in the SaaS. People see experts’ insights, studies, and trust data from journalists, bloggers, industry-leading reports, not the opinions.
What to create?
- Create Industry reports that cover large amounts of data and identify the trend.
- Analyze the Trends and incorporate them in your content.
- Search for User behaviour insights of different tools and include them.
- Include Benchmarks and performance metrics of different tools.
- At the end of the year, write a report titled “Yearly industry report
The way to extract in-house data from your tool is as follows:
- Examined usage patterns, which are Anonymized.
- Track most-used features
- Compare the changes year over year.
- Dissection of funnel metrics or the results of the automation.
- Pull data on integrations and API utilizations.
Example:
An automation tool on SaaS released a report on 2025 Productivity Trends, which demonstrates the frequency of tasks being automated each week by the teams. It achieved 120+ organic backlinks from blogs, news sites, and influencers.
Why it works:
Statistics position your brand as an authority, with E-E-A-T and zero outreach links.
2. Integrations Partnerships Link Building (Fast Authority Wins)
The SaaS companies are obsessed with displaying such integrations – With each such integration, there is the creation of backlink opportunities.
Where backlinks come from:
- Directories with partners such as Zapier, Slack, HubSpot, Shopify, Notion, etc.
- Co-marketing instructions.The integration of HubSpot and Shopify to sync e-commerce customer and product data.
- Joint webinars or tutorials
- The announcement pages are to be integrated.
- Listing platform developers.
Example flow:
Your tool is connected with Slack –
Your product is listed in the Slack directory –
You issue an integration guide –
Partners cross-promote –
You automatically acquire backlinks.
Why it works:
Partnership links are high quality, of context, and 100 percent safe, no spam, no punishment, pure value.
3. Thought Leadership of Founder Zero-Budget Strategy.
In early-stage SaaS, founders are usually the best link generators.
Where founders earn links:
- Expert quotes in articles
- Conduct Podcast and YouTube interviews.
- Share stories on Community threads, include Indie Hackers, Reddit, X.
- Take LinkedIn insights
- SaaS guest newsletter appearances.
This builds:
- Personal authority
- Brand credibility
- Backlinks that are created naturally.
Stacking Framework Backlink of Founder:
- Publish 1-2 expert posts weekly
- Reply to HARO queries
- Engage in niche communities
- Reuse knowledge in blogging posts.
- Get hired to host podcasts with your story.
4. Comparison and Alternative Pages of SaaS.
These are among the highest-converting and highest-linked SaaS pages.
Examples:
“Best marketing Tools”
“[Competitor] Alternatives”
Grand vs Brand: Complete Comparison.
Why it works:
- Individuals seek comparisons to make purchases.
- These pages are usually linked to review sites.
- You snatch competitor-intent keywords.
- The editorial links to them come naturally.
These pages are regularly cited by SaaS review sites, bloggers, and marketplaces, making them a consistent link-acquisition technique.
5. Guest Posting with a SaaS Angle.
One of the most effective relationship-building backlink strategies is guest posting, particularly for SaaS startups.
Editors love topics like:
“How AI is transforming the workflow of [industry].”
“Lessons learned on scaling our SaaS product to 0-1,000 users.”
“Remote SaaS team productivity structures.”
Autonomation strategies that give startups 20 hours of saved time per week.
Pro tip:
Refer to real-life examples, graphs, or metrics of your own product to enhance E-E-A-T and acceptance rates.
6. Broken Link Building SaaS Niches.
Several SaaS applications close, rebrand, or lose features- causing dead links in blogs and directories.
To locate SaaS-specific broken pages:
- On Google, search tool alternatives + dead links.
- FilterSaaSKeywordsAhrefs – Broken Backlinks.
- Look for 404 competitor pages.
- See out-of-date lists of the best X Tools.
Template (short & effective):
Hey [Name], I hope you’re doing well. I saw that you have an article with a tool that no longer works. Recently, we released a revised edition of this resource with the correct data and screenshots. You may have the latest link as you wish.
The approval rates for backlinks are also relatively high, since you are not requesting to be linked to them but are actually improving their content.
7. Shyscapper for outdated guides
The rate of SaaS content obsolescence is higher than in any other industry. Obsolete tutorials = free skyscraper deals.
What to do:
- Locate outdated instructional manuals for using the X tool.
- Update them with:
- New User Interface screenshots
- Record new real workflow videos
- Give updated and latest Internal data.
- Take an example from actual cases.
- Incorporate additions of automation.
- Contact the websites that mention the outdated guide.
Why it works:
Editors desire new material that is accurate and reliable for their readers.
SaaS is dynamically moving – individuals are constantly connected with updated information.
8. HARO Requests & Journalist Requests.
Journalists often interview SaaS founders. You simply sign up for the HARO website, receive daily email queries, give the correct answer to the journal query, and they mention you and give credit in their articles. This helps you to gain backlinks, and the SaaS tool is mentioned on a high-authority website, which increases the brand authority.
Why is it useful?
Because founders have:
- Deep industry expertise and do practical work.
- Access to authentic real user data.
- They have trends, insights, and predictions.
What to expect:
- Site DR 60-90 backlinks
- On publications in technology, marketing, SaaS, growth, and business.
- 3-5 approved quotes every month (active contributors)
Hack: Prepare a swipe file of prepared responses to answer quickly.
Beginner-Friendly and Budget-friendly SaaS tool backlinks tactics
It’s difficult for startups to build SaaS backlinks because founders don’t have much budget to reach high-DR websites and build links. But there is good news. I give you budget-friendly SaaS link-building strategies that are pocket-friendly, and you can easily rank your brand organically, especially for startups.
1. Link insertion via Resources Pages
The resource page is a curated collection of helpful content, including how-to guides, tool lists, templates, and solutions that are a perfect fit for the SaaS founder who wants easy context for link-building.
Examples of resource pages
- Best tools list for the specific problem
- Valuable resources for developers/marketers/freelancers.
- Productivity tools for remote jobs
- Free SaaS apps for business.
You simply reach out to them by searching
“Best SaaS tool for productivity.”
“Useful resources for Newbies in blogging”
“Affordable tools for SEO”.
When you find your niche type of content, simply
Pitch them with a value-able message or e-mail
Hey, I hope you’re doing well. [Your Name]. I went through your resource page. I am impressed with your work for [specific audience]. We built a free tool to solve the [Pain point]. It might be valuable to your raiders and help them with [specific work]. I’m happy to share a preview and am waiting for your positive response.
Why does it work?
It works because they love sharing the new tool with their audience, which keeps their content fresh and up to date.
2. Give a mini Free Tool.
Offering a miniature version of your tool for a lifetime for free, such as a Free title generator or LinkedIn Profile optimizer. It provides one of the highest ROIs for SaaS startups. Free tools are the natural link magnets for bloggers, Communities, review sites, and listicle authors. They mention your tool in their content, which creates a free backlink to your SaaS tool.
People love to share useful free tool that are effective and solves problems. A well-designed micro tool can generate passive backlinks for years without ongoing outreach. Offer features that deliver high performance, not just your competitors.
Examples of free tools
- Free social media captions, titles, and hashtags generator.
- ROI calculator
- ON-page SEO Checker
- AI-content Creator
- Email subject line testing
- Automation workflow tester
- Website Audit Preview
And many others research according to your niche and interest.
3. Listicle Inclusion Outreach ( Best X Tools) Pages.
Among the simplest methods to obtain contextual links is to include listicles in the ranking for industry queries.
Examples:
“Best CRM tools for startups”
“Top AI tools for marketers”
Best automation tools for small teams.
These listicles often send:
- Constant referral traffic that is long-term.
- Quality, in context, outbound links.
- Authority is an indicator of your niche in SaaS.
How to get included:
- Find listicles in the top 10 of your category.
- Determine the old lists or absent competitors.
- Pitch a short value message.
- Give them free access, or make it your selling point.
Pro tip:
Give the writer a pre-written description to simplify their work; this raises the acceptance rate by a considerable margin.
4. Free and High-Trust Community-Driven Backlinks.
Communities underestimate backlink machines. Once founders publicly disclose solutions, templates, or free tools, community members will automatically share links to them in blog posts, tweets, or resource lists.
Optimum areas to grow SaaS backlinks:
- Reddit (r/SaaS, r/Entrepreneur, r/Marketing, r/ SideProject )
- Indie Hackers (Launch section) and (Growth section).
- Slack teams (growth, AI, technology, marketing teams)
- SaaS founder and marketer of SaaS Facebook groups.
- X/Twitter posts in start-up circles.
What to share:
- Case studies
- Free tools
- Templates
- Founder insights
- Product updates
- “Built this in public” stories
Why it works:
Blogs, newsletters, or YouTube channels are often owned by community members who love linking to valuable SaaS tools or by founders who genuinely share value. Create Unique
5. Infographics and Visual Assets
The founders of most SaaS companies do not care about visual link building, which is why this method remains highly successful.
When you make exclusive infographics, process maps, frameworks, charts, or workflow charts, bloggers, journalists, and even creators of their niche sites tend to embed them in their material – and cite your SaaS site as the origin.
Why This Works for SaaS
- Individuals favor streamlined graphical descriptions of complicated SaaS or technical processes.
- Authors are fond of free images because they do not need to create something.
- Illustrations are naturally integrated into listicles, tutorials, and explainer blogs.
- No outreach is required after your pictures have been indexed.
How to Build Infographics that Are Link Worthy and Free.
You don’t need a designer.
Use:
- Canva (free templates)
- Visme (free tier)
- Figma (free for teams)
- Piktochart (diagrams/charts are free)
Create visuals around:
“How X Process Works in SaaS”
The SaaS Growth Funnel Explained.
Artificial Intelligence Workflow to automate X Task.
“Feature Comparison Chart”
The latter are very searchable and embeddable.
Tips: Post them on Free Image Sites to get Passive Links.
Upload your visuals to:
When individuals use/ download your image, they have to provide attribution, which is:
Free and Affordable Link Building Tools: passive, high-authority backlinks to your SaaS home page or blog.
Example:
A small CRM SaaS tool uploads the image of “Sales pipeline flowchart: on Pinterest and Unsplash.Within the 3 months, they receive
27 organic backlinks from the small business blogs, university sites, and sales coaching websites.
No budget, no outreach with the visual assets they built backlinks.
Affordable tools for the SaaS tools link-building
These are the most effective low-budget tools that SaaS founders and marketers can employ to identify link opportunities, competitor analysis, and ease outreach:
Free Tools
1. Google Search Operators
Search Resource pages and competitor references.
2. HARO / Qwoted / Terkel
Get coverage in the press by responding to requests from journalists.
3. Ahrefs Free tools
Backlink checker, Keyword difficulty checker, Content explorer (limitless).
4. Ubersuggest (Free Tier)
Simple backlink information + content suggestions.
5. Google Alerts
Monitor brand mentions and claim the unlinked citations.
Affordable Tools
1. Hunter.io / Snov.io
Find verified emails.
2. NinjaOutreach
Universal outreach automation designed for SaaS founders.
3. LowFruits
Keyword competitor links on a low budget.
4. BuzzStream Starter
Link management and outreach scale.
5. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog SEO Spider gives Free Access to up to 500 URLs for broken link building.
Pro Tip: Ahrefs Free Backlink Checker, Hunter.io, and Google Sheets are the key to building an entirely low-budget SaaS link-building machine.
Outreach E-mail templates
I’ll share the templates with you when you reach out about SaaS link building. Customize this according to your needs.
1. Resource Page Link Request (Brief and Courteous)
Subject: Addiction to your resource list?
Hi {Name},
I discovered your page on tools when I was reading about the tools to use in researching the subject of {audience}.
We created a free tool named [Your Tool Name] that assists people and helps them achieve the benefits they seek.
You can do it here if it is of value.
Here’s the link: {URL}
One way or the other, enjoy the great resource!
{Your Name}
2. Listicle Inclusion Template.
Subject line: The new tool in your next best-tool-roundup.
Hey {Name}, I’m obsessed with your article on the best tools category.
We just released {Tool Name}, which is utilized by the target audience to achieve {primary outcome}
In case you are updating the list, I’d be glad to give:
screenshots
feature breakdown
stats/case studies
Can we include us?
Thanks!
{Your Name}
3. Broken link building template (SaaS-specific)
Subject: I have found a broken link in your guide to {topic}
Hi {Name},
I noticed that your article title contains a broken link to {old tool or outdated guide}.
We have developed an improved version of:
Discuss you points {point 1}
{point 2}
{point 3}
Please feel free to change the broken link with ours:
Hope it helps your readers!
{Your Name}
4. Integration/Partner Page Back link Template.
Subject: Add us to your directory of partners?
Hi {Name},
We have recently integrated with {Brand}, and these tools are available in your partner directory.
Would you be open to adding us?
It is our page of integration: {URL}
And one hundred-word description where necessary:
{Description}
Thanks so much!
{Your Name}.
Conclusion
Backlinks to SaaS tools do not need to be fast, costly, and complicated. By at least targeting SaaS backlink strategies such as data-driven content, integration relationships, founder-led authority, and free mini-tools, you establish connections that literally cause rankings to climb and trials, signups, and revenue to occur.
These high-impact strategies, coupled with beginner-friendly tactics such as resource pages, listicle outreach, community backlinks, and visual asset generation, will create a scalable, repeatable backlink framework that will grow your SaaS every single month.
Keep it small, keep it regular, and keep in mind:
Each good backlink you receive multiplies your power, reduces your CAC, and puts your SaaS at the front.