Last Updated on by Artem K.
Link building service in general and link building for SaaS in particular require a lot of repetitive, monotonous work.
In today’s post I want to share some tips that can speed things and make your SaaS SEO life a lit bit easier.
Without further ado…
1. Don’t Ignore Incoming Outreach Emails
This is a common link building mistake.
Once you have been out there for quite some time, you’d inevitably start receiving outreach email from other link builders asking for the same thing all over and over again.
They start and go like this:
Hey there,
I just came across your amazing article – URL
Can we please write a guest post for you?
They can also ask you to link from that article directly (we do that hehe).
Instead of ditching these emails (especially when they are decently written), reply back asking for a link in return.
We always offer a link in return using A-B-C link exchange method where we’d employ a 3rd party website to link to the website we want a link from.
When they get that link, they link to our clients.
Even though there isn’t much harm in direct link exchange, we take an extra step to hide the breadcrumbs while also saving our client’s page authority (as we are not linking out from their website).
See also – link building statistics for SaaS (emails, conversions etc)
2. Create Content Clusters And Prioritize Content Creation
There are types of content that attract backlinks.
Google respects authority and authority is achieved by your knowledge that you demonstrate by publishing a lot of content.
Granted, you can’t be an authority on a wide range of topics (especially when your SaaS company has only been there out there for not too long).
This is when you have to niche down to a certain content topic that you can invest 100% of your time and effort.
Let’s say you are a time tracking app.
Time tracking is used by remote workers, freelancers, consultants, employees, small business…
What you do next is you pick one category and cover it to the bones.
Let’s say we picked “time tracking for remote workers”.
Now you need to cover this keyword as well as supporting content like:
- How to stay productive as a remote worker
- Top things remote workers waste time on
- How to make time tracking pleasant for remote workers
Once you write content on one specific topic and interlink it all together, you’ll have an edge in ranking because Google will see you as an authority on the subject.
It’s only when you cover one topic cluster completely, you can move onwards to the next one.
3. Do This If Your SaaS Content Is Not Ranking
The tips below is what our typical link building process outline looks like…before we even start placing backlinks.
If you had a certain article published and are not seeing any positive search engine ranking improvements, you need to run it against the following checklist.
See also – Steps to Recover SaaS SEO From Google Algorithm Update Fast.
1. Keyword Search Intent
Different keyword/phrases all require different content length.
Longer content is not always better – far from it.
You need to assess what’s going on in top 5 ranking positions for the results with the same intent and make changes accordingly.
SurferSEO is the best tool for it.
2. On-Page SEO
Gone are the days of keyword density…NOT! Google is a robot and understands what you feed it with.
Hence, you can’t ignore keyword densities and synonyms. Again, SurferSEO is the best tool for it.
3. Internal Linking
If the page you are trying to rank is dangling on it’s own out there, you need to send to it a bunch of internal links from relevant articles.
The easiest way to find relevant articles is to go to Google and use advanced search operators:
Keyword site:domain.com
You’d replace “keyword” with the main keyword your non-ranking article is trying to rank for and “domain.com” with your SaaS company’s domain.
Google will then show you the pages that it feels are most relevant to that keyword.
You then take 3-6 of those and link from them internally.
4. Lack of Supporting Content
This is what I touched on in the previous point. If you write exclusively about “time tracking for remote workers”, ranking for “time tracking for small business” might require additional content on time management within small business realm.
5. Backlinks
Obviously, the more important ranking factor – you still need them, especially in the more competitive areas.
Ranking a SaaS brand using SEO is fairly competitive so you’ll need backlinks one way or another.
4. In Publishing Content, Quality > Quantity, But…
It doesn’t need to be perfect before you publish a piece of content!
You still need to build a critical mass of “words” you have published on your SaaS blog.
Once you publish an article, you can always come back to it in 2-3 months and update it by adding additional information, keyword variations and even images.
The goal is to publish content that’s not sh*t and do that as fast as possible.
You can then perfect that with time and exploit the gains you’d get from updating your content (Google loves that).
5. Whatever Happens, Always Publish More Content (and Build Links)
Google algorithm updates roll out every 6 months or so.
Inevitably some of them can have a negative effect on how your website rarnks.
In fact, they can bring a huge negative (or positive) effect to your rankings.
At times, it’s deserved and on any other occassion you can be a “collateral damage”.
If there is a significant drop in traffic and you can connect it with the most recent Google algorithm update (I tend to Google search for “google algorithm update” in Chrome to find most recent news), sit back and relax.
I had one of my SaaS clients reach out to me a good few months ago or so when they suffered a small algorithm adjustment.
They tried asking me whether they should do anything different with the links that remained in the current campaign.
I took all the responsibility telling them that everything that we did with them so far is absolutely right, that they need to relax and focus on one thing they’ve been doing really well – publish more great content.
Granted, two-three weeks later another algorithm adjustment brought their traffic to all-time highs.
Remember, whenever in doubt, publish more good content and…build good quality links!
6. Disavow Backlinks Every Once in a While
SEO spam is ruthless and keeps accumulating as your website is growing in popularity.
In fact, you can often end up with very significant waves of inbound backlink spam.
Here is what it looks like:
A crazy increase in incoming backlink spam is a cause for concern because, even though Google can pick most of it, it will probably miss something.
And that can prevent your SaaS blog from ranking!
That’s why I recommend running disavowing backlinks every once in a while.
Here is how to disavow backlinks with your Google Search Console and Ahrefs.
Looking for Help With Link Building?
Link building is a continuous, monotonous process that…needs to be done.
If you need some help with link building, check out our link building case studies and contact me to schedule a call.
You can also connect with me on LinkedIn!