# SaaS Link Building: How to Earn Links (9 Strategies) Source: https://piperocket.digital/blogs/saas-link-building/ Author: Kamaraj Mathiarasan (Kim), Co-Founder, PipeRocket Digital Published: 2026-04-08 Last updated: 2026-10-27 SaaS link building is the process of getting high-quality backlinks to the pages published by a SaaS company so that it helps them be trusted more by Google and helps with ranking improvement and an increase in website authority. Those are the pages you ask for links to. When you pitch a guest post, a spot in a software roundup or a partner listing, the link should point at a product or comparison page that’s already ranking in the top 30, 20 or 10, because that’s the page you want climbing for searches that lead to demos. Blog posts and free tools earn links too, and they’re worth having, but they play a supporting role. ## The 9 SaaS Link Building Strategies at a Glance - Strategy 1: Run a competitor link gap analysis to find sites that link to your competitors but not you. - Strategy 2: Get your product into “best \[category] software” listicles and roundups. - Strategy 3: Publish original data that journalists and bloggers want to cite. - Strategy 4: Build free tools and calculators your buyers use, and let them earn links over time. - Strategy 5: Co-market with integration and technology partners. - Strategy 6: Turn unlinked brand mentions into links. - Strategy 7: Write guest posts and contribute expert quotes on sites your buyers read. - Strategy 8: Replace broken links on resource pages in your niche with your own page. - Strategy 9: List your product on review sites and software directories. ## What Is SaaS Link Building? SaaS link building covers the work of getting other relevant websites to link to a software company’s pages, with the effort aimed at the pages that drive signups and demos rather than whatever is easiest to get linked. The basic idea is the same as any link building, and it’s one part of a wider [SEO strategy for SaaS](https://piperocket.digital/blogs/saas-seo/). Google treats a link from a relevant, trusted site as a vote for your page, and pages with stronger links tend to rank higher. What changes for a SaaS company is where you point the effort. Three principles shape it: - **Commercial pages first:** product, comparison, alternatives, integration and pricing pages are where buyers decide. They’re also the pages that rarely attract links on their own, so they need the most help. - **Google and AI search together:** the same mentions and links that help you rank also help ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews recognise your brand and recommend it. - **Quality over volume:** a handful of links from real, relevant sites beats hundreds from link farms or private blog networks (PBNs). The cheap links don’t move rankings, and some of them can get you penalised. ## How to Select Which Pages Need Backlinks? Point your links straight at the commercial pages already ranking in the top 30, 20 or 10, like product pages, comparisons, alternatives and integrations, and use free tools and research as a second route for pages that are hard to get links to, like pricing. The easiest way to find them is in Search Console. Pull up your commercial pages and see which searches they’re ranking for in the top 30, top 20 or top 10, especially the ones where someone is clearly shopping for a tool. A page sitting there is close enough that a few good links can move it up, onto page one or into the top three, and it’s the kind of page that turns visits into demos. Here’s how the main page types compare: | Page type | Why it needs links | Get links from | |-------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Comparison and alternatives pages | They rank for “X vs Y” and “X alternatives” searches, where buyers are choosing a tool | Listicle placements, guest posts, and editorial citations requested from existing articles in your niche that already compare tools | | Integration pages | They rank for “\[tool] + \[tool] integration” searches from people already using a partner | Partner marketplace listings and co-marketing pages | | Product, feature and use-case pages | They rank for category and problem searches like “contract approval software” | Guest posts, listicle placements, and editorial citations requested from existing articles that already mention the problem your product solves | | Pricing page | Buyers search “\[product] pricing” late in their decision | Rarely other sites. It gets authority through internal links from pages that do earn links | | Free tools and original research | They earn links on their own and give you a second route to pages that are hard to get links to | Digital PR, editorial citations from articles that already quote similar data, and resource pages | ## What Makes a Good Backlink for SaaS? A good SaaS backlink comes from a relevant site, sits inside real editorial content, reaches the buyers you sell to, and points to a page that matters to you, and Domain Rating on its own doesn’t tell you any of that. DR is the number most people check first, and it’s useful as a rough filter. But a DR 80 site that covers everything from crypto to recipes won’t do much for a payroll software company. A DR 45 HR blog that payroll buyers actually read can do a lot more. So check the link itself: | What to check | What good looks like | Red flag | Bad example | |---------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Relevance | The site covers your category or your buyer’s job | No topical connection to what you sell | A payroll tool getting a link from a travel or crypto blog | | Editorial placement | The link sits inside an article, where an editor chose to add it | Footer links, sidebar blogrolls, “sponsored post” pages | A “Partners” list in a site footer that links to 40 unrelated companies | | Context and anchor | The sentence around the link is about the page it points to, with natural anchor text | Exact-match keyword anchors on every link | Ten new links that all use “best payroll software” as the anchor | | Real traffic | The linking page gets visitors and ranks for something | A site with no traffic that exists to sell links | A DR 60 blog with almost no organic traffic and a “write for us, $50 per post” page | | Link type | A followed link, or a nofollow link from a site your buyers read | Sponsored links passed off as editorial | A paid placement with a followed link and no sponsored label | Then there’s what to stay away from. [Google’s spam policies](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) treat buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, excessive link exchanges, and large-scale guest posting with keyword-stuffed anchors as link schemes. PBNs, link farms and “50 links for a few hundred dollars” packages fall into the same bucket. At best Google ignores those links, and at worst your site gets hit. ## How to Start SaaS Link Building To start SaaS link building, pick the commercial pages you want to rank, run a link gap against your competitors, choose two or three strategies, do the outreach, and track how those pages move. If you’ve never done link building for SaaS before, this is the order I’d go in: 1. **Pick your target pages:** open Search Console and list 5 to 10 product, comparison or integration pages that already rank in the top 30, 20 or 10 for searches with buying intent. 2. **Run a link gap:** put your domain and three or four competitors into Semrush or Ahrefs, and pull the sites that link to at least two of them but not to you. 3. **Choose two or three strategies:** look at what the link gap turned up and pick the strategies that fit, like listicles if it’s full of roundups, or broken link outreach if it’s full of resource pages. 4. **Do the outreach:** find the right person at each site, send a short pitch that gives them a reason to link, and ask for the link to go to your target page. 5. **Track the target pages:** check the referring domains and rankings of those 5 to 10 pages every month, and put more time into the strategies that are landing links. Once that’s running, you can scale it by adding more target pages and one more strategy at a time, so you’re never running more outreach than your team can follow up on. ## What Tools Do You Need for SaaS Link Building? To do link building for SaaS, you need a backlink tool like Semrush or Ahrefs, Google Search Console, a crawler for finding broken links, an email finder, and an outreach tool once you’re sending pitches at volume. Here’s what each one costs and what it’s for (prices checked in October 2026): | Tool | Pricing | Helps you to | Alternatives | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console/about) | Free | Find the pages ranking in the top 30, 20 or 10, and track how they move as links come in | Semrush or Ahrefs, though their rankings and traffic are estimates and won’t match your exact Google data | | [Semrush](https://www.semrush.com/prices/) | From $117.33/mo billed annually ($139 monthly). 7-day free trial | Run a backlink gap against competitors, find their broken pages, and track your referring domains | Ahrefs, SE Ranking | | [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/pricing) | From $29/mo (Starter), with Lite at $129/mo. No free trial, but Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is free for your own site | Do the same competitor and backlink research with Link Intersect, broken backlinks and mention alerts | Semrush, Moz Pro | | [Screaming Frog](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/pricing/) | Free up to 500 URLs, then £199 a year | Crawl resource pages and spot the broken links you can offer to replace | Sitebulb, Ahrefs Site Audit | | [Hunter](https://hunter.io/pricing) | Free plan with 50 credits a month. Paid from $34/mo billed yearly ($49 monthly) | Find the right editor’s or writer’s email address before you pitch | Snov.io, Apollo | | [Pitchbox](https://pitchbox.com/pricing/) | From $210/mo billed annually ($300 monthly). Free trial for teams after a demo | Run outreach campaigns, follow-ups and link tracking in one place | BuzzStream, Respona | | [Featured](https://featured.com/pricing) | Free plan. Paid from $29/mo billed annually | Answer journalists’ requests for expert quotes and earn mentions | Qwoted, Help a B2B Writer | | [Qwoted](https://www.qwoted.com/pricing/) | Free plan. Pro at $1,188 a year | Get matched with reporters looking for expert sources | Featured, Help a B2B Writer | | [Google Alerts](https://www.google.com/alerts) | Free | Get an email whenever a new page mentions your brand, so you can ask for a link | Mention, Brand24 | ## The 9 SaaS Link Building Strategies The 9 SaaS link building strategies are competitor link gap analysis, “best \[category]” listicles, digital PR with original data, free tools, partner co-marketing, unlinked brand mentions, guest posts and expert quotes, broken link outreach, and review sites and directories. You won’t need all nine to do link building for SaaS well. Most programs I’ve seen run two or three at a time, chosen for the pages you want to rank. ![The 9 SaaS link building strategies and the pages each one helps most](https://piperocket.digital/images/blog-infographics/saas-link-building-9-strategies.webp) Here’s what each one looks like in practice, before we go through them one by one. Data/list preparation is the time to pull the data or build the prospect list, and action is the time spent doing the outreach or building. They’re rough ranges, and they’ll run longer on a newer site with less authority: | Strategy | What to do | Tools | Data/list preparation | Action | |-----------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------|-----------------------|-----------| | 1\. Link gap | Run a backlink gap → filter to sites linking to 2+ competitors → pitch | Semrush or Ahrefs | 1 day | 1‑2 weeks | | 2\. Listicles | Find roundups on pages 1-2 → pitch with a reason → ask for a product page link | Google search | 1 day | 1‑2 weeks | | 3\. Digital PR | Pull product or survey data → publish one research page → pitch findings | Survey tool, Featured or Qwoted | 3‑4 weeks | 1 week | | 4\. Free tools | Pick a weekly calculation → build the tool → link it to feature pages | Dev team or no-code builder | A day or less each | 1 week | | 5\. Partners | List integrations → claim marketplace listings → plan co-marketing | Partner listings, Hunter | 1 day | 1 week | | 6\. Unlinked mentions | Search your brand minus your site → find unlinked mentions → ask for a link | Google, Google Alerts | 1 day | 1‑2 weeks | | 7\. Guest posts | Shortlist sites → pitch a topic only you can write → add one contextual link | Hunter, Pitchbox, Featured | 1 day | 1‑2 weeks | | 8\. Broken links | Find dead links on resource pages → match to your page → email the fix | Screaming Frog, Semrush or Ahrefs | 2‑3 hours | Same day | | 9\. Review sites | Claim G2, Capterra, GetApp → fill profiles → ask for reviews | Review site profiles | 1 day | Same day | ### Strategy 1: Competitor Link Gap Analysis **Tool(s) you’d need:** Semrush or Ahrefs. **Time needed to prepare requirements:** 1 day. **Time needed for action:** 1 to 2 weeks. A link gap analysis is the backlink side of a [SaaS SEO competitor analysis](https://piperocket.digital/blogs/how-to-do-saas-seo-competitor-analysis/), and it finds the sites that link to two or more of your competitors but not to you, which makes them the warmest prospects you’ll ever get. I usually start here, because it’s the closest thing to a warm lead in SaaS link building. If a site already links to two of your competitors, it has nothing against linking to a tool like yours, and it just hasn’t come across you yet. Ahrefs calls this report Link Intersect, and Semrush calls it Backlink Gap. You put in your own domain and three or four competitors, then ask for the sites that link to at least two of them. What comes back is mostly software roundups, industry blogs, integration directories and resource pages, and each kind tells you what to do next. A roundup is a listicle pitch (Strategy 2). A resource page is a broken link pitch (Strategy 8). Here’s that report in Semrush for ClickUp against Asana and Monday.com. Each row is a site that links to at least two of them, and the clickup.com column shows ClickUp has no links from it yet: ![Semrush Backlink Gap report for clickup.com compared with asana.com and monday.com, listing referring domains like canva.com, ebay.com, quora.com and tiktok.com that link to Asana and Monday.com but not to ClickUp](https://piperocket.digital/images/blog-screenshots/saas-link-building-backlink-gap.webp) Because so many of these links sit on roundups, this tends to be where your comparison pages and homepage pick up the most. ### Strategy 2: “Best \[Category] Software” Listicles and Roundups **Tool(s) you’d need:** Google search. **Time needed to prepare requirements:** 1 day. **Time needed for action:** 1 to 2 weeks. Getting your product into the “best \[category] software” lists that already rank puts you in front of buyers at the exact moment they’re building a shortlist. These lists already rank for the searches your buyers make, so a spot on one gives you a strong link and a place on the shortlist at the same time. Search the terms your buyers would use, like “best expense management software” or “\[competitor] alternatives”, and note every roundup on the first two pages. For “best project management tools”, almost every result on the page is a roundup, from Lark, Wrike, Paymo and Teamwork.com: ![Google results for “best project management tools” where most results are listicles, including Lark’s 20 best project management tools, Wrike’s 21 top picks, Paymo’s 20+ best software and Teamwork.com’s 10 best tools](https://piperocket.digital/images/blog-screenshots/saas-link-building-listicle-serp.webp) When you reach out to the writer, give them an actual reason to add you. Maybe there’s a feature nobody else on the list has, or a pricing tier that fills a gap, or a customer story they could quote. And ask for the link to go to your product page. If you don’t say anything, most writers just link the homepage. The pitch doesn’t need to be long. Something like this works: > Hi \[Name], I read your roundup of the best \[category] tools and noticed \[Your Product] isn’t on it. We’re the only one on the list that \[specific difference, like “handles multi-entity payroll in one account”], which might help readers in \[their situation]. Happy to send a demo account or a short write-up if it’s useful. If you do add us, our \[category] page is the best one to link to: \[URL]. Some publishers charge for a spot, which is fine as long as the link is marked as sponsored. Listicle placements were part of the program behind [Tredence’s](https://piperocket.digital/case-study/tredence/) India rankings, and they’ve become more valuable now that AI tools pull their recommendations from exactly these lists. ### Strategy 3: Digital PR and Original Data **Tool(s) you’d need:** Your product data or a survey tool, Featured or Qwoted. **Time needed to prepare requirements:** 3 to 4 weeks. **Time needed for action:** 1 week. Original data, like a survey, a benchmark report or numbers from your own product, gives journalists and bloggers something they can’t get anywhere else, so they link to you as the source. Most SaaS companies are sitting on data that publications would love to get their hands on, like how long finance teams take to close their books or how fast support teams reply to tickets. You can turn your own product data into a yearly benchmark, or run a short survey with your customers, and then use [digital PR](https://piperocket.digital/blogs/how-to-do-digital-pr/) to pitch the two or three findings that surprise people to the journalists and newsletters your buyers read. A pitch to a journalist should lead with the finding, since that’s the story: > Hi \[Name], you’ve written about \[topic] a few times, so I thought this might be useful. We looked at \[data source, like “anonymised data from 4,000 finance teams”] and found that \[surprising finding, like “the average team takes 9 days to close its books”]. The full breakdown, with charts you’re welcome to use, is here: \[URL]. Happy to share more detail or put you in touch with our \[role] for a quote. The coverage usually links to the research page itself. When a story is really about what your product does, ask for the link to go to that product page instead. HubSpot’s marketing statistics page shows how far this can go. It’s one research page, and Semrush counts 22.4K referring domains and 214K backlinks pointing at it: ![Semrush Backlink Analytics overview for hubspot.com/marketing-statistics showing 22.4K referring domains and 214K backlinks to a single research page](https://piperocket.digital/images/blog-screenshots/saas-link-building-digital-pr-backlinks.webp) Our own [AI SEO statistics](https://piperocket.digital/research/ai-seo-statistics/) page is built the same way, as one page meant to be cited. For [Spendflo](https://piperocket.digital/case-study/spendflo/), links from high-authority sites lifted their domain authority alongside the content work. ### Strategy 4: Free Tools and Calculators **Tool(s) you’d need:** Your dev team or a no-code builder, Google Search Console. **Time needed to prepare requirements:** A day or less each. **Time needed for action:** 1 week. A free tool, like a calculator, grader or template, keeps earning links for years, because people link to things that solve a problem for their own readers. The trick is picking a tool that does a piece of math your buyers do every week. A finance product could build a cash runway calculator, and a sales product could build a commission calculator. Keep it simple, make sure it works on a phone, and give it its own page with a short explanation underneath. HubSpot’s free email signature generator is a good example. It has nothing to do with CRM software on the surface, but marketers and salespeople use it, and it keeps earning links from articles about email signatures: ![HubSpot’s free Email Signature Template Generator page, an example of a free tool a SaaS company uses to earn links](https://piperocket.digital/images/blog-screenshots/saas-link-building-free-tool-example.webp) After that, it mostly runs itself, which makes a free tool one of the few SaaS link building assets that keeps working on its own. Bloggers link to it from how-to articles, and teams pass it around. The links land on the tool page, so link from there to the feature pages it relates to, and the authority it collects will reach the pages you want ranking. ### Strategy 5: Integration and Partner Co-Marketing **Tool(s) you’d need:** Partners’ marketplace listings, Hunter. **Time needed to prepare requirements:** 1 day. **Time needed for action:** 1 week. Integration and technology partners can link to you from their marketplace listings, integration pages and co-written content, and these are some of the most relevant links a SaaS company can get. Start with the products you already integrate with. Almost all of them have an app marketplace or an integrations directory, and a listing there usually includes a link, often straight to your integration page, which is about as relevant as a link gets. You can see how much this adds up in Semrush. Filter ClickUp’s backlinks to zapier.com and there are over a thousand, starting with Zapier’s ClickUp integrations page linking to clickup.com/zapier: ![Semrush backlinks report for clickup.com filtered to zapier.com, showing 1,003 links including Zapier’s ClickUp integrations page linking to clickup.com/zapier](https://piperocket.digital/images/blog-screenshots/saas-link-building-partner-links.webp) Then talk to their marketing team about doing something together, like a joint webinar, a co-written guide, or a case study about a customer you share. Each one gives both of you a natural reason to link to the other. Just keep it genuine, since Google treats excessive “you link to me, I’ll link to you” swaps as a link scheme, but a partner linking to you because you really work together is fine. A note to a partner’s marketing team can be just as short: > Hi \[Name], we’ve had an integration with \[Partner] live for \[time], and \[number or type of] customers use both tools together. Could we get it listed in your app marketplace, pointing to our integration page (\[URL])? We’d also be up for a joint case study or a webinar on how teams use the two together, if that’s on your plan for this quarter. ### Strategy 6: Unlinked Brand Mentions **Tool(s) you’d need:** Google search, Google Alerts, Semrush or Ahrefs. **Time needed to prepare requirements:** 1 day. **Time needed for action:** 1 to 2 weeks. An unlinked brand mention is a page that names your product without linking to it, and turning those into links is often the easiest win in link building. The writer already likes you enough to mention you, so you’re asking for something small. To find these, search Google for your brand name while leaving out your own site (`"yourbrand" -site:yourdomain.com`), or set up mention alerts in Ahrefs or Semrush. Then send a short, friendly note thanking them for the mention and asking if they’d add a link. The note itself can be a few lines: > Hi \[Name], thanks for mentioning \[Your Product] in your article on \[topic]. Really appreciate it. Would you mind linking the mention to \[URL], so readers can find us easily? Thanks either way. Here’s that search for ClickUp. Most of the results are pages talking about ClickUp on other sites, and each one is worth checking for a link: ![Google results for “clickup” -site:clickup.com, showing pages on Apple’s App Store, Google Play and Wikipedia that mention ClickUp](https://piperocket.digital/images/blog-screenshots/saas-link-building-unlinked-mentions.webp) If the mention is about a particular feature or integration, ask for the link to go to that page, and otherwise the homepage is fine. ### Strategy 7: Guest Posts and Expert Contributions **Tool(s) you’d need:** Hunter, Pitchbox, Featured or Qwoted. **Time needed to prepare requirements:** 1 day. **Time needed for action:** 1 to 2 weeks. Guest posts and expert quotes get your team’s knowledge onto sites your buyers already read, with a link back to you as the source. In link building for SaaS, this is the strategy that gives you the most control over where the link goes. In a guest post, you’re writing the sentence, so you can link to the product or comparison page you want to rank, as long as the link genuinely fits. Pick a few publications your buyers actually read, and pitch topics only someone in your role could write. The sites that publish anything for anyone won’t do much for you. For expert quotes, services like Qwoted, Featured and Help a B2B Writer connect writers with experts, and they usually link to the people they quote. Podcasts work much the same way, with a link in the show notes. A guest post pitch should show the editor you know their readers: > Hi \[Name], I’m \[role] at \[Your Product], and I’ve been reading \[Publication] for a while, especially your piece on \[recent article]. I’d like to write something for your readers on \[specific topic], covering \[two or three points they won’t get elsewhere]. Here are a couple of things I’ve written before: \[links]. Would that be a fit? ClickUp shows how this plays out. Filter its backlinks in Semrush to Forbes Councils, where executives contribute expert articles, and there are a dozen posts like “18 Essential Productivity Tools Recommended by Tech Experts” linking to it: ![Semrush backlinks report for clickup.com filtered to forbes.com/councils, showing expert-contributed Forbes Technology Council articles that link to ClickUp](https://piperocket.digital/images/blog-screenshots/saas-link-building-expert-contributions.webp) Keep the anchor text natural, and don’t turn this into a volume game. Large-scale guest posting with keyword-stuffed links is one of the things Google’s policies call out by name. ### Strategy 8: Broken Link and Resource Page Outreach **Tool(s) you’d need:** Screaming Frog, Semrush or Ahrefs, Hunter. **Time needed to prepare requirements:** 2 to 3 hours. **Time needed for action:** Same day. Broken link outreach means finding dead links on pages in your niche and offering your own page as the replacement, which helps the site owner fix their page while earning you the link. The best place to look is resource pages, the “best tools for…” or “useful resources” pages in your category. Run them through a broken link checker, or open Ahrefs’ broken backlinks report for a competitor to see which of their dead pages people still link to. If you have a page that covers the same thing, email the owner, point out the dead link, and suggest yours as the fix. Keep the email focused on helping them fix the page: > Hi \[Name], I was reading your \[resource page title] and noticed the link to \[dead resource] goes to a page that no longer exists. We have a guide that covers the same thing, kept up to date: \[URL]. Might be a handy replacement, if it’s useful. In Semrush, that’s the Indexed Pages report with the Broken Pages box ticked. Here it is for Asana, where some broken URLs still have hundreds or thousands of sites linking to them: ![Semrush Indexed Pages report for asana.com filtered to broken pages, showing URLs that return 400, 403 and 500 errors while still having thousands of backlinks from hundreds of referring domains](https://piperocket.digital/images/blog-screenshots/saas-link-building-broken-pages.webp) Resource pages tend to link to helpful content, so in link building for SaaS this one usually works better for pillar guides and free tools than for product pages. ### Strategy 9: Review Sites and Software Directories **Tool(s) you’d need:** G2, Capterra and GetApp profiles. **Time needed to prepare requirements:** 1 day. **Time needed for action:** Same day. Listings on review sites like G2, Capterra and GetApp, and on category directories, give you links and a presence on the sites buyers check before they shortlist a tool. Most of these links are nofollow, so on their own they won’t do much for your authority, but I’d still set them up properly whenever you do link building for SaaS. Review sites rank for a lot of “\[category] software” searches, buyers read them before they book a demo, and AI tools often lean on them when they recommend a product. Fill out every profile, keep the screenshots and pricing up to date, and ask your happiest customers to leave a review. These are the review sites and directories most SaaS companies list on: - **Review sites:** G2, Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice and TrustRadius - **Launch and discovery sites:** Product Hunt, AlternativeTo and SaaSHub - **SaaS directories:** SaaSworthy and Crozdesk - **Your category’s own directories:** like the HR tech or martech listings your buyers already browse For reviews, a short ask to your happiest customers works best, right after a win like a renewal or a good support call: > Hi \[Name], glad \[specific result] is working well for your team. Would you be up for sharing a quick review on \[G2/Capterra]? It takes about five minutes, and it really helps other teams find us: \[review link]. ## How Does Link Building Work for AI Search? Link building for [AI search](https://piperocket.digital/blogs/ai-search-optimization-for-saas/) works through [brand mentions](https://piperocket.digital/blogs/brand-mentions-seo/) as much as links, because AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews recommend brands they see mentioned across the sources they trust. Ahrefs looked at what lines up with brands showing up in AI Overviews. [Branded web mentions had a correlation of 0.664](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/), while the number of backlinks came in at 0.218 and Domain Rating at 0.326. So the brands that get talked about across the web show up far more than the ones that just have a lot of links. Links still matter, but link building for SaaS now has a second payoff. A listicle placement, a quote in an industry article or a mention in a partner’s guide all count, linked or not. Strategies 2, 3 and 7 do the most here, because they get your brand named in the kinds of pages AI tools pull from. ## How Do You Measure SaaS Link Building? Measure SaaS link building by the links your target pages earn and what those pages do afterwards: their rankings, their traffic and the trials or demos they bring in. Total backlinks and DR are easy to report, but they don’t tell you if your link building for SaaS is working. A hundred new links to the blog won’t help if your comparison page is still on page two. So track the pages you picked at the start: | Metric | What it tells you | Where to find it | |------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | Referring domains to target pages | Whether links are landing where you planned | Ahrefs or Semrush, filtered to the target URLs | | Rankings of target pages | Whether the links are moving the pages that matter | Search Console or your rank tracker | | Referral traffic | Whether the linking pages send real visitors | GA4, under traffic acquisition | | Trials and demos from target pages | Whether the program brings in pipeline | GA4 conversions and your CRM | | Link mix | Whether the profile looks natural | Ahrefs or Semrush (followed vs nofollow, anchor text spread) | For a quick read on the site as a whole, a backlink overview in Semrush or Ahrefs shows referring domains, total backlinks and an authority score. Here’s Asana’s. Watch the referring domains number trend up over time, but judge the program on the target pages: ![Semrush Backlink Analytics overview for asana.com showing 117K referring domains, 5.2M backlinks and an Authority Score of 74](https://piperocket.digital/images/blog-screenshots/saas-link-building-semrush-overview.webp) Expect it to take a while. Links take time to get crawled and counted, so movement on the target pages usually takes a few months to show up. Judge the program on the trend across a quarter. ## How PipeRocket Handles SaaS Link Building At PipeRocket, we run link building the same way: we pick the commercial pages that need links first, then use the strategies that can reach them, and we report on rankings and pipeline from those pages. If you’d like help with that, take a look at our [link building services](https://piperocket.digital/saas-seo-agency/link-building-agency/) or [talk to us](https://piperocket.digital/contact-us/). ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is SaaS link building? SaaS link building refers to earning backlinks from relevant websites to a software company’s pages, focused on the product, comparison, alternatives, integration and pricing pages that drive trials and demos, and it also builds the brand mentions that help AI tools recommend your product. ### Do backlinks still matter in 2026? Yes. Links are still one of the main ways Google judges which pages to trust, and brand mentions now also shape what AI tools recommend. What’s changed is that quality matters far more than volume, and cheap links mostly get ignored. ### How many backlinks does a SaaS company need? There’s no fixed number, because it depends on how many referring domains the pages ranking for your target search have. Run a link gap analysis on those pages and aim to close the gap with relevant links, rather than chasing a total. ### How long does SaaS link building take to show results? Most SaaS companies see target pages start to move within a few months of links landing, and the effect builds over the following quarters. Pages already sitting on page two tend to move first. ### Should you build links to product pages or blog posts? Mostly product pages. Ask for links straight to your product, comparison, alternatives and integration pages, since those are the pages you want ranking. Blog posts, tools and research earn links too, and you can pass that authority on to hard-to-link pages like pricing through internal links. ### Is buying backlinks illegal? No, buying backlinks isn’t illegal, but paying for links that pass ranking credit breaks Google’s spam policies, and Google can ignore those links or penalise the site. If you pay for a placement, the link should be marked as sponsored. ### How do you scale SaaS link building? Scale SaaS link building by adding target pages and strategies one at a time, starting with the ones that repeat well, like link gap outreach, listicle placements and partner listings. When you need more links than your team can earn, that’s usually the point to bring in a SaaS link building agency. ### How do you get brand mentions without backlinks? You get brand mentions without backlinks by getting your company quoted, reviewed and listed in the places your buyers read, like industry articles, podcasts, review sites and community threads. Those mentions still help AI tools recognise your brand, and the ones worth having can often be turned into links later. ### What is internal link building for SaaS? Internal link building for SaaS means [linking between your own pages](https://piperocket.digital/blogs/how-to-use-internal-linking/) so the authority your site earns reaches the pages that need it, like pricing and product pages. ### Should you hire a SaaS link building agency? Hire one of the [best SaaS link building agencies](https://piperocket.digital/list/best-saas-link-building-agencies/) if you need links faster than your team can earn them, or you don’t have the time for outreach. Look for one that picks target pages first and avoids paid link schemes.