How to Get Backlinks for a SaaS Product: What Works, and What Will Get You Burned
Get backlinks for a new SaaS product from crawled directories, integration pages, curated lists and real guest pitches. Ten steps, and the tactics to refuse.
To get backlinks for a SaaS product nobody has heard of yet, earn them where sites already have a reason to link to you: directories whose listing pages are crawled and indexed, the integration and partner pages of tools you connect to, comparison and curated-list pages in your category, and guest pieces pitched to editors who really publish. Back that with one asset on your own site worth citing, and turn every unlinked mention of your product into a link by asking. Refuse link farms, private blog networks and paid links that are not marked as paid, because they put your domain at risk for links search engines are built to ignore. The work is slow and manual, and that is the reason it holds.
This guide covers:
what has to be true of your own site before any link is worth chasing
ten steps in the order you perform them, with where each one usually fails and how to recover
journalist-request platforms, broken-link building and launch platforms, and when each is worth the time
the tactics to refuse, and the specific reason each one backfires
why being named matters as much as being linked, now that answer engines read pages
a guest pitch template you can copy
one worked example carried through every step
The method assumes you own one live web product, can edit its pages yourself, and are starting from close to zero links. If you want the broader picture of how content and search fit together for a single product, it is in Content Marketing and SEO for a One-Product Company; this piece stays on the off-page part.
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The worked example used throughout
The guide follows one hypothetical product through every step. Call it Groomly: a booking and reminders tool for independent dog groomers, built by one founder, live for a few weeks, with a pricing page, a features page, a Stripe integration and a Google Calendar sync. Groomly has no backlinks worth naming. The founder has a weekend a month for this work and no budget for an agency.
Every step ends with what the Groomly founder does. Swap in your own product as you read.
What makes a backlink worth having?
A backlink is worth having when a real page that people and crawlers visit links to a page of yours that answers something, in a context that makes sense. Three things decide the value, and you can check each one yourself without any tool.
Question to ask of the linking page
How to check it
What a bad answer means
Is the page indexed?
Search for its exact URL or title in Google
An unindexed page passes nothing to anyone
Is the link followed?
View the page source and read the rel attribute on the link
nofollow, ugc or sponsored links still send visitors and mentions, but are treated as hints rather than endorsements
Is the context relevant?
Read the page around the link
A link from an unrelated page is noise to a crawler and to a reader
Notice what is missing from the table: domain authority scores, link counts and "DA 50+" promises. Those are third-party estimates. They can help you sort a long list, but the three checks above are what you can verify directly, and they tell you whether a link exists in any useful sense.
The steps, in order
1. Make the pages you want linked worth landing on
Before you ask anyone for a link, decide which pages should receive links and make sure they hold up. For most SaaS products that is three pages: the home page, one page that explains what the product does for a named kind of customer, and one asset worth citing (step 6). Each one has to return a 200 status, load its main text in the served HTML, carry a title that says what the page is, and point its canonical tag at itself.
Where it fails: the link you earn points at a URL that redirects twice, or at a page whose canonical points somewhere else, or at a JavaScript-rendered page whose text a crawler never sees. The editor gave you the link and most of its value leaks away.
Recovery: fix the page before you pitch. If a link already points at a broken or redirected URL, set a single direct 301 from that URL to the right page and keep it in place permanently. The checks that show what a crawler actually meets on those pages are laid out in What Is an SEO Audit?.
Groomly: the founder picks the home page, a page called "Booking software for independent dog groomers", and a third page still to be built. The features page currently redirects from /features to /features/ to /product; the founder collapses that to one hop.
2. Write the facts you want repeated, once
Write a short fact sheet and keep it in a single document you paste from every time. It holds the product name exactly as you want it spelled, a one-line description, a two-sentence description, the category, the URL you want linked, the founder's name and role, and the two or three things the product does that a reader would care about.
This step looks clerical. It is the step that makes mentions add up. When twenty pages describe your product in twenty different ways, a crawler and an answer engine have twenty weak signals. When they repeat the same name, the same category and the same one-line description, they reinforce one another.
Where it fails: you write a fresh description for each directory, and three months later your product is "a scheduling app", "a CRM for pet businesses" and "an appointment widget" depending on where someone looks.
Recovery: go back to the listings you control and bring them in line with the fact sheet. Most directories let you edit a listing after submission.
Groomly: "Groomly is booking and reminder software for independent dog groomers. Clients book online, get text reminders, and pay a deposit through Stripe." The category is always "Scheduling". The linked URL is always the home page, except where a page is specifically about groomers.
3. List on directories whose pages are actually crawled
Directories are the first links most products get, and the place most products waste time. A directory is worth your submission when its listing pages are indexed, its links to products are followed (or it sends real visitors even if they are not), and it has a category that fits you.
Check before you submit:
Search Google for site: followed by the directory's domain and a product name you know is listed there. If listing pages do not appear, the directory's pages are not being indexed, and a link from them is close to worthless.
Open one existing listing and view its source. Find the outbound link to the product and read its rel attribute.
Look at the category page you would sit in. If it has thousands of entries with no curation, your listing will be buried.
Read the submission terms. Some directories make the followed link conditional on something, such as a badge on your site or passing a quality check. Know which before you submit.
The LaunchScaler directory, for example, gives a free permanent listing and makes the dofollow link conditional on the site passing its readiness bar, which is measured on the live site; the directory itself is on the LaunchScaler home page. Whatever the directory, the conditions are worth reading because they tell you what the link is actually tied to.
Where it fails: you buy a "submit to 500 directories" package. Most of those directories have no indexed pages, some exist only to sell submissions, and the result is a backlink profile full of pages nobody visits.
Recovery: do not pay to remove them unless they are clearly spam pointing at you in volume; most low-quality directory links are simply ignored. Stop adding more and spend the time on the steps below. If a site you never chose links to you with spam anchor text in large numbers, a disavow file is the last resort, not the first.
Groomly: the founder shortlists twelve directories, runs the four checks, and submits to the five that pass, using the fact sheet word for word.
4. Claim your integration and partner pages
Every tool your product connects to is a potential link that almost no early-stage founder asks for. Payment providers, calendar platforms, form builders, CRMs, no-code platforms and hosting providers often run app marketplaces, partner directories, "built with" showcases or integration pages. They link to listed products because it makes their own platform look useful.
List every integration your product actually ships, not the ones on the roadmap.
For each, search for its marketplace, partner programme or showcase page.
Read the listing requirements. Some need a review process, a demo account or a support URL.
Submit with the fact sheet, and add a dedicated page on your own site for each integration ("Groomly and Google Calendar") so the partner has a precise page to link to.
Ask your contact at the partner, if you have one, whether they run a customer stories section or a partner newsletter.
Where it fails: the marketplace requires a formal app review and you abandon it halfway. Or you list an integration that is still half-built and get rejected.
Recovery: start with the platforms that have the lightest review, and treat the formal marketplaces as a project with its own deadline. Only list what works today.
Groomly: Stripe and Google Calendar are the two real integrations. The founder writes one page for each on the Groomly site, then applies to both partners' listing programmes.
5. Get onto comparison pages and curated lists
People shopping for software search for "best X for Y" and "alternatives to Z". The pages that rank for those searches are written by publishers, bloggers and sometimes your competitors. Many are updated periodically, and their authors want complete lists.
Search for the three or four phrases a buyer in your category would type: "best scheduling software for groomers", "alternatives to [the incumbent]".
Open every page on the first two results pages and note who wrote it and when it was last updated.
Find the author or site contact. Write a short, specific note: what your product is, the one way it differs from the entries already listed, and an offer of a free account to test it.
Do not ask for a specific position or anchor text. Ask to be considered.
Where it fails: the list is an affiliate page and the author only adds products that pay commission. Or the page has not been updated in years and nobody answers.
Recovery: decide by the condition, not by hope. If the page is an affiliate list and you have no affiliate programme, move on. If it is abandoned, skip it. Spend your notes on pages that show a recent update date and a real author.
Groomly: the founder finds a pet-business blog with a list of grooming software updated this year, emails its editor with the fact sheet and a free account, and gets a reply asking for screenshots.
6. Build one asset on your own site worth citing
Directories and partner pages link to your product because you asked. Most other sites link only when you have something they need to reference. For a small SaaS product, the asset that earns links is usually one of four things:
Data only you have. Aggregated, anonymised patterns from your product's own usage, published with a clear method. This is the asset no competitor can copy.
A free tool. A calculator, checker or generator that solves one small problem for your buyer without signing up.
A template or reference. A document your buyer would otherwise build from scratch: a policy, a checklist, a pricing sheet.
A definitive answer. One page that answers a question your buyers ask better than anything that currently ranks for it. The method for that is in SEO Content Writing for Founders.
Where it fails: the asset is a disguised sales page, and nobody links to a sales page. Or the data has no method behind it, and editors cannot cite it with confidence.
Recovery: remove the pitch from the asset itself and keep one plain link to the product at the end. If you publish data, state how it was collected, over what period and with what limits.
Groomly: the founder builds a free cancellation-policy template for grooming salons, with a deposit section that explains the options plainly. It is the third page chosen in step 1.
7. Pitch guest placements to real editors
A guest placement is a piece you write for another publication, with a link back that an editor chose to keep. Done well, it is the strongest link a small product can earn on its own, because it sits in context on a page a human approved.
Build a list of publications your buyers actually read: industry blogs, trade association sites, newsletters with web archives, the blogs of complementary tools.
For each, read three recent pieces. If they do not publish outside contributors, or every piece is a thin "sponsored post", cross them off.
Find the contributor guidelines or the editor's name. Write to a person, not a generic inbox, whenever you can.
Pitch one specific idea that fits what they already publish, using the template further down. Offer an angle only you can write because of what your product sees.
Follow up once, a week or so later. Then stop.
When accepted, write the piece to the publication's standard, not yours. Put your link where a reader would want it, usually once in the body or the author bio, pointing to the page that fits.
Where it fails: the "editor" replies with a price list. That is a paid link, and it belongs in the section on what to refuse. Or your pitch is a generic list of three titles and goes unanswered.
Recovery: if a site asks for payment, decline, or, if the placement is genuinely useful to readers, insist the link is marked rel="sponsored" and treat it as advertising rather than a backlink. If pitches go unanswered, make the next one narrower: one idea, one reason you are the person to write it.
Groomly: the founder pitches a regional pet-business association blog on "How independent groomers can cut no-shows without losing clients", drawing on the deposit and reminder patterns the product sees.
8. Show up where your buyers talk, and convert mentions into links
Communities, forums, newsletters and podcasts mostly produce nofollow links or no links at all. They still matter, for two reasons: they send people who may write about you later, and they put your product's name in text that crawlers and answer engines read.
Answer real questions in the communities your buyers use, under your own name, and mention the product only when it is the honest answer.
Offer yourself as a guest to small podcasts and newsletters in your niche. Their show notes and archive pages are often indexed.
Set up an alert for your product name and your founder's name.
When someone mentions your product without linking, write a short thank-you and ask whether they would add a link to the page that fits. Give them the exact URL.
Where it fails: you post links in communities without contributing, get flagged as spam, and lose the account. Or you ask for a link in a tone that reads as a demand.
Recovery: contribute for weeks before you mention anything. When you ask for a link, ask once and accept a no.
Groomly: a groomer mentions Groomly in a forum thread and later in a short blog post about her salon setup. The founder thanks her and asks for a link from the post; she adds it.
9. Ask for third-party reviews and coverage
Independent reviews of your product, on review platforms, editorial blogs or commissioned review pages, give you an indexed page about your product that you do not own. That is valuable for links and for being named. The kinds of review sites, what each asks of you and what each is worth are compared in Software Product Review Sites.
Ask your first happy customers to leave a review where your buyers look.
Offer free access to independent reviewers in your niche, with no condition on what they write.
Where a review is paid for, make sure it is labelled as commissioned and any link is marked accordingly.
Where it fails: you offer customers a discount in exchange for a positive review. Most platforms prohibit it, and it erodes the one thing a review is for.
Recovery: ask for an honest review, with no incentive tied to the rating.
Groomly: the founder emails the ten most active salons and asks each for an honest review, no incentive attached.
10. Check what you earned, and fix what leaks
Once a month, look at what actually exists.
In Google Search Console, open the Links report and read the top linking sites and the most-linked pages.
For every link you earned in steps 3 to 9, confirm the linking page is still live, still indexed, and still links to a working URL.
Fix any target page that now redirects or returns an error.
If a link disappeared, ask the site owner politely whether it was intentional.
Note which step produced links that hold, and spend next month's time there.
Where it fails: you only count links and never check whether they point at live pages. Six months of work quietly degrades through redirects and renamed URLs.
Recovery: keep a plain spreadsheet with the linking URL, the target URL, the date and the rel value. Recheck it monthly.
Groomly: after the first month the sheet holds five directory links, one partner listing pending, one comparison-list mention and one link from a customer's post. The template page has no links yet; the founder schedules a second pitch round built around it.
Are journalist requests, broken-link building and launch platforms worth it?
These three come up in almost every search for backlink tactics. None of them is a scheme, and none of them is a shortcut. Whether each one earns its place depends on a condition you can check before you start.
You can answer within hours, the query is in your field, and you have a real vantage point
Queries in your field are rare, or the "reporters" are content mills collecting free copy
Broken-link building
You already have the step 6 asset and it genuinely replaces what died
The only thing you could offer is your home page or a sales page
Launch platforms such as Product Hunt
You have a few people ready to try the product on the day and a page worth landing on
You expect the launch page itself to carry your search visibility
Journalist-request platforms
These services send you queries from writers looking for expert sources. You reply with a short, quotable answer, and if it is used you are named in the piece, sometimes with a link. Done well, this produces mentions on publications you could never pitch cold.
The cost is speed and volume. Good queries close quickly, and each one draws many replies, so most of yours will go unused. Answer only queries where you can say something specific from building your product, keep the reply to a few sentences the writer can paste as-is, and include your name, role and the one URL you want referenced. Where it fails: you reply to everything with a generic paragraph and nothing gets picked. Recovery: filter hard to your category and reply to fewer queries, faster. If a month passes with no relevant queries, stop and move the time to step 7.
Broken-link building
The method: find pages in your niche that link to resources that no longer exist, then tell the page owner and suggest your page as a replacement. Owners have a reason to act, because a dead link makes their page worse.
Search for resource pages, guides and lists in your category.
Check their outbound links for ones that return errors or land on parked domains.
Read what the dead page used to cover; a web archive copy helps.
Write to the owner: which link is broken, where it sits on their page, and your page that covers the same ground.
It only works when your replacement truly does the same job. Where it fails: you offer a sales page in place of a dead guide, and the owner ignores you. Recovery: build or extend the step 6 asset to cover what the dead resource covered, then send the note.
Launch platforms
A launch day on Product Hunt or a similar platform brings attention for a day or a week and a listing page that may or may not pass link value; check its rel attribute as in step 3, because that is the only way to know. Its real value is the people who arrive, try the product and later write about it, which feeds steps 8 and 9.
Where it fails: you launch before the pages from step 1 hold up, and the attention lands on a broken or thin site. Recovery: treat the launch as one date in a longer plan, finish steps 1 and 2 first, and follow up with the people who comment.
Which tactics should you refuse?
Some tactics produce links quickly. They are cheap to buy and easy to scale, which is exactly why search engines have spent years learning to discount them. Google's spam policies name link schemes, including buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, as a violation. The risk is not only that the links do nothing; a pattern of manipulative links can lead to a manual action against your site, and recovering from one takes far longer than earning the links honestly would have.
Tactic
What it looks like
Why it backfires
Link farms
Sites whose only purpose is to host outbound links, often on hundreds of unrelated topics
Easy to detect by pattern; the links are ignored at best and a liability at worst
Private blog networks (PBNs)
A set of sites, often on expired domains, controlled by one party and used to link to clients
Built to deceive; once a network is identified, every site it links to is exposed
Paid links without disclosure
A "guest post" or "feature" that costs money and carries a followed link
Violates search engine policies; if you pay, the link must be marked rel="sponsored"
Bulk directory submission services
One payment, hundreds of directory listings
Most directories involved have no indexed pages; you get noise, not links
Reciprocal link swaps at scale
"Link to me and I will link to you" across many unrelated sites
Excessive link exchanges are a named link scheme; a few natural partner links are fine
Automated comments and forum signatures
Software or freelancers posting your link across blogs and forums
Almost always nofollow, often spam-filtered, and damaging to your name in the communities you need
Fake reviews and planted mentions
Paid or invented reviews and posts about your product
Breaks platform rules and the trust a review is supposed to carry
The test that sorts honest tactics from the rest is simple: would the link exist if search engines did not count links at all? A partner listing, a guest piece an editor accepted and a customer's blog post would. A PBN link would not.
Why being named matters as much as being linked
Answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews build their answers from text. When they describe the options in a category, they draw on what pages say, not only on how those pages link. A product named consistently, in a relevant context, on pages that are trusted, gives those systems something to work with even where no link exists.
Two cautions keep this honest. First, the relationship between brand mentions and visibility in AI answers is observed as a correlation; nobody outside these systems can show that a given mention caused a given answer. Second, a mention you plant is worth no more than a link you buy. The practical consequence is modest and useful: the fact sheet from step 2 matters, community answers from step 8 matter, and an unlinked mention on a good page is a success, not a failure. Ask for the link, and keep the mention either way.
A guest pitch template
Copy this into your notes and fill every line before you send. If you cannot fill a line, the pitch is not ready.
Guest pitch
Subject line: the working title of the piece, written for their readers, not for you
Opening sentence: the editor's name and one specific recent piece of theirs you read, with what it covered
The idea: one sentence on what the piece argues or teaches
Why their readers: one sentence connecting the idea to what the publication already covers
Why you: one or two sentences on what you see from building your product that others cannot write about
Shape: rough length and the three or four sections you would cover
The link: one sentence saying you would like to reference one specific page, and which one, if it fits their guidelines
Close: an offer to adjust the angle, and your name with a link to the product's home page
For Groomly, the "why you" line reads: "I build booking software for independent groomers, so I see how deposits and reminders change no-show rates across salons, and I can write about what works without selling anything." It claims a vantage point, not a number. If you have measured data, put it in the piece with its method, not in the pitch.
How long does this take?
Every step above is manual, and most of them depend on someone else replying. That is the trade-off: the links that hold are the ones that cost attention rather than money, and attention is what a solo founder has least of. A workable rhythm is to finish steps 1 and 2 once, work through steps 3 and 4 in the first month, and then give steps 5 to 9 a fixed slot each month, reviewing with step 10. Journalist requests fit into spare hours; broken-link outreach fits once the step 6 asset exists.
What no method can promise is a ranking or a citation. Links and mentions improve the odds that search and answer engines find, trust and quote you. They do not guarantee it, and anyone who promises otherwise is selling the tactics in the refusal table.
Your next step
Open a blank document and write your fact sheet from step 2 today, then list every integration your product actually ships. Those two pages of notes are what every later step pastes from, and they take an hour.
If the off-page part is the work you cannot get to from your own site, LaunchScaler's SEO / GEO / backlink boost does it by hand: guest placements pitched to real editors, valid JSON-LD, quotable pages for answer engines, and technical off-page clean-up. It uses no link farms or private blog networks, and if a placement does not happen, you are told it did not. It is scoped and quoted per project, from $299. Talk to us.
Catch SEO regressions after a deploy: baseline production, then re-check robots.txt, noindex, canonicals, redirects, raw HTML and certificates on every release.
A full website audit checks seven areas, not just SEO: search, AI visibility, backlinks, security, compliance, speed and visual, and whether your site works.
The free SEO tools that read your live site: Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, PageSpeed Insights, Rich Results Test, a crawler and a readiness scan, in order.
