Want to be sassy with SaaS SEO? Focus on backlinks.
How many times have you heard about the utter importance of linking? If you are just starting your SEO efforts, you need a bit of guidance.
Running ahead of the competition is only possible if you are ready to use new tricks. SEO without blacklinking is like a car without gas. It looks great but doesn’t work.
SaaS SEO is somewhat different from SEO for regular companies. That said, it’s still built on the old SEO pillars.
Where do you start? The new backlinking trends can help you make gigantic steps ahead while the competition is sifting through the standard “how to” guides.
1. Ask for backlinks for your SaaS company
Here is a no-brainer. Many SaaS companies forget that asking around often works better than tricky strategies. You must have friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances who are promoting their websites.
If the niche is similar, the backlinks are priceless. Be careful not to exchange links with websites which aren’t related to yours.
Asking for backlinks is becoming trendy for SaaS companies since it doesn’t require large investments.
2. Make it easy to backlink to your website
If you want to generate backlinks without asking, you need to make it easy to backlink to your website.
SaaS business is highly niche-related. That’s why you can have an easy time finding people interested in backlinking to your website. All you have to do is offer them the required content.
Look deeper into the content marketing strategies for SaaS companies. High-quality content involves backlinking to authority websites. If you use the information from these websites, such as statistics or quotes (duly mentioned alongside the sources), you are upping your chances of being quoted and backlinked.
3. Create amazing reviews
Reviews are gaining immense popularity in numerous niches since many businesses are working in the virtual space.
Look for websites that accept software reviews. They can help you kill two birds with one stone: market your product and get a backlink.
While you are writing your extensive software review articles, ask your existing clients to offer their reviews. It’s one more 2-in-1 solution. Reviews can attract new customers while creating a backlink at such authority websites as:
Make sure you are listed on these websites for the strategy to work out.
4. Become faster than light
To stay competitive while creating useful backlinks is impossible without speed. Speed is a major factor considered when making the page rank. How fast is fast enough? Make sure your page loads in less than three seconds and Google will be happy. So will your blacklinking partners.
Speed requirements are changing faster than the pages load. So you have to make sure you follow them. You can stay on top of the speed game by taking a simple speed test.
If your page loading time is unsatisfactory, you need to:
- Minimize your HTTP requests
- Employ asynchronous loading for CSS and JavaScript files
- Reduce server response time
- Choose the right host
- Optimize images
- Avoid broken links
Our experts in SEO for the IT/tech industry say that the number of websites ready to accept your backlinks goes down by dozens with each lost millisecond.
5. Comment your head off
What is an excellent way to use your competition? We hope you aren’t stopping at “learning from them”. While research and copying may be valid tools, a sneaky way to build backlinks is to offer testimonials.
Find niche-related businesses and offer testimonials about their products while inserting a link to yours. In the majority of cases, both of you win. The company gets the much-needed review and comments. You get the backlink to the right website.
Of course, this approach shouldn’t be limited to the competition. You can do it with any company that fits the description.
When working with competitors, you can offer them a competitive collaboration. You help their marketing efforts; they allow you to post a backlink.
6. Look for original content
Coming up with original content is becoming harder and harder every year. The moment something new and improved appears online, hundreds of copywriters post the same stuff on other websites.
SaaS SEO efforts involve creating original and high-quality content. Backlinking to such content should be highly valuable. When you are planning to market your content for backlinking, make sure it’s really good. Look for similar content before posting.
7. Be smart about relevance
In the past, most companies have been after 100% or 75% relevance for their backlinks. Today, we are discovering the weight of 50%. 25%, and even 5% relevance.
When building backlinks for a SaaS business, getting numerous 100% relevant backlinks is downright impossible. That’s why you should allow yourself to research a broader specter of backlinking opportunities.
For example, if you are offering a service, which helps companies arrange video conferences, your goal would be to acquire backlinks to video conference related articles and services. That’s your 100% relevance.
Meanwhile, you can go further to take advantage or headphone manufacturing company websites, online education websites, and life coaching websites. Go further to work with online presentation providers.
Be smart and don’t avoid companies offering virtual masterclasses. Don’t pass by telemedicine sources.
Grab what you can as long as it’s at least 5% related to what you do.
Take full advantage of backlinking in SaaS SEO: 5 mistakes to avoid
You must be careful about SaaS backlinking mistakes made by your competitors in the past. Companies, which work with SEO professionals, know how not to run into the same trap twice.
1. Don’t be afraid of becoming a copycat
There isn’t anything shameful in copying your competition. Go ahead and copy away. Take all their backlinks and copy them.
After all, if they are ranking higher than you. So they must be doing something right.
2. Don’t forget to check the existing backlinks
You’ve finally gotten the much-needed backlink. Should you forget about it and move on? No! You can lose it in seconds. Sometimes a webmaster may decide that your link is irrelevant or delete it by mistake.
Make sure you monitor your backlinks.
3. Don’t use the same anchor for numerous backlinks
The goal of an anchor text is to tell the search engine what the link is about. Naturally, the text should be different from link to link. If you keep using the same one, you may trigger the search engine’s scrutiny and lose the links along with credibility.
Don’t just focus on using keywords for backlinks. Employ related keywords, similar phrases or just parts of your texts. Do all you can to avoid linking penalties.
4. Don’t expect quick results
Link building and backlinking efforts don’t give quick results. Even if you follow all the expert advice to the letter, you must be ready to wait.
Natural backlinking takes time. Use the time to create content, which is more backlink worthy.
5. Don’t forget about SaaS backlinking specifics
SaaS companies require a special approach to backlinking because there are highly niche businesses. When looking for backlinking tips, keep your SaaS nature in mind. Otherwise, your SEO efforts won’t achieve quick results.
Conclusion
Whether you are a SaaS startup or an established company, keep the above information fresh in your head.
Your goal is to take advantage of the expert advice and avoid mistakes made by other companies.
Backlinking may be tough, time-consuming, and sometimes frustrating. Thankfully, in the end, you always reap the SEO benefits. Good luck!
You may be also interested in: Backlink guide to SEO for SaaS companies.