Link Building for SaaS Companies

SAAS, or “Software as a Service”, is now a $170 billion industry, growing at 18% yearly. 

From productivity tools to CRM software and eCommerce, SAAS is taking over the cloud computing market, piece by piece.

But how do SAAS marketers outperform their competitors in the challenging environment of Google search? 

In this article, we’ll explore how significant brands like Moosend used SEO effectively to 10 x their traffic within one year using content marketing and targeted link-building.

Organic Growth Strategies for SAAS Companies

The starting point for any company, SAAS or otherwise, is amazing content. In fact, some of the most exciting and innovative content marketing anywhere is happening in the SAAS space right now via brands like Slack, Monday.com and Toast.

Content marketing increases inbound traffic, boosts brand awareness, builds trust and helps establish thought leadership.

Because SAAS brands are typically on a subscription model, requiring long-term commitment on behalf of the end user, content plays a critical role in educating and persuading decision-makers. 

Another of our favourites here at Dream Digital is Moosend, an email marketing software that’s seen stratospheric traffic growth thanks to a fantastic content strategy.

Let’s dive into how Moosend is using content marketing to scale its business.

How SAAS Brand Moosend 10 X’d its traffic with Content and Strategic Linkbuilding

How has Moosend, an email marketing software, gained such impressive market share so quickly? A quick glance at a tool like Ahrefs shows that they 10 x’d their organic traffic in a little over a year!

By analysing their content output we can see that they first achieved a comprehensive coverage of their subject, alongside clear UX, a serious but witty brand tone of voice, and great use of tables and images.

Nick Dimitriou, Moosend’s Head of Growth, says Moosend spent a lot of time conducting a detailed content audit of their sector, then searching for information gaps. Once written, all of their pages are continually updated with the latest keyword research to keep them current. 

The result, as even a quick browse of their site will demonstrate, is an extremely well run brand that deserves its dominant place in Google search.

Pick any one of their subjects and then see if competitors have genuinely written a more authoritative, more well-informed, or better laid out article. You’ll be hard pressed to find one.

Why Content Marketing is the Core of SAAS Linkbuilding

Volume isn’t enough, as we all know, when it comes to cracking the Google code. Any sound content marketing strategy covers keywords at the top, middle and bottom of the funnel.

Although Moosend only offers email software, its blog traffic covers a much wider range of subjects, including SEO, marketing automation, design, UX, and affiliate programs. They currently rank for over 117k keywords!

Knowing that this type of audience is all potential customers, Moosend uses a broad funnel of content to build relationships with customers. 

Each article has a clear intent based on the stage of the funnel it’s targeting; they’re not trying to directly convert users who are reading about the power of guest blogging, because that would be inappropriate. But every blog article has a sidebar offering a free trial of their SAAS software meaning that their huge content net is going to catch some fish.

Key Takeaways

• Create an intelligent content marketing strategy which covers not just your own core product, but the tangential areas that your SAAS audience will be researching. 
• Establish a core intent for each piece of content: are your users searching for products, seeking information etc. Each intent should correspond with an outcome you want your audience to achieve.
• Update this content regularly: it must be equal to or better than anything else out there in terms of clarity and depth if you’re going to see engagement.
• Work hard at your UX: give the pages a sense of space, use unique images that illustrate your core purpose, and videos if you have them
• Map your Personas – Good writers will always know exactly who they are writing to so that the end user feels as if they are being spoken to directly. Conversion always happens after a core emotional resonance has been established on the page.

Using Outreach to Scale your SAAS Linkbuilding

In addition to 15 writers’ worth of awesome content, Moosend added to their traffic-generating efforts with guest blogs and link outreach, says Nick Dimitriou.

A quick analysis of Moosend’s backlink profile shows high-profile guest blogs from Moosend team members on sites like Monday.com, Zapier and Yieldify. These posts not only introduce Moosend’s brand to a vast audience in the SAAS space, but they offer high domain authority backlinks that are worth their weight in gold.

Targeted Link outreach was another factor. A case study on Pitchbox, one of the leading blog outreach tools, shows that Moosend used outreach to run targeted campaigns with theme-based keywords, resulting in a steady stream of relevant backlinks that skyrocketed the authority of the Moosend domain.

Moosend made sure to use Pitchbox’s personalization fields and conditional logic to ensure their emails were personal and didn’t trigger spam filters.

At the time of writing Moosend has 10.8k referring domains with a total of over 2.9 million backlinks. Pretty impressive stuff.

SAAS Linkbuilding Challenges

Linkbuilding is harder in 2023 than it’s ever been but perhaps nowhere more so than the SAAS industry. 

Because the industry is populated by digitally-savvy web natives who probably grew up doing SEO, it’s extremely difficult to get emails opened and links inserted unless you’re running an A-game, with an experienced and persistent team.

Here are a few tips on elevating yourself about the crowd when building links for a SAAS audience:

Ensure your pitch is note-perfect – SAAS is not the space for generic pitches that don’t demonstrate knowledge of the brand you’re outreaching to. Keep it personal!

Add Value – Is your content genuinely good enough to warrant a link? Before wasting any time on the outreach process you really need to take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself this question. Because this is the big leagues.

Be Persistent – This is a numbers game and a waiting game. Always utilise at least three stages of outreach using a good tool like Pitchbox. Keep split testing your subject lines and messaging to see what works.