How to Outsource Backlink Building for SaaS 101

If you are a SaaS marketer, chances are you’ve heard about the importance of backlinks for your website’s SEO performance. While that is true and backlinks hold a great deal of value for your website’s authority and place in Google’s rankings, acquiring those precious links can be a tough and time-consuming task.

That’s why the majority of SaaS companies look to outsource their backlinking efforts, at least partially. It has a lot of benefits but also needs to be approached with caution, as building low-quality backlinks to your SaaS website can cost you rankings. 

The Role of Link Building in SEO

Link building remains one of the most critical and misunderstood aspects of SEO, especially in the SaaS industry. For SaaS businesses that rely heavily on organic search to fill the top of their funnel, backlinks act as a proxy for trust. Think of backlinks as votes of confidence for Google - each time a relevant website points a backlink going to your domain, your authority gets a boost. 

But it goes deeper than this. In competitive SaaS verticals, such as Fintech, your content isn't just battling for attention - it's battling against other companies with deep backlink profiles, often built over years of strategic effort. It’s even harder to compete against these giants because of their authority - they get natural backlinks with no effort now.

And that’s exactly where you want to be. The right links help boost domain authority, improve indexation, accelerate content rankings, and ultimately reduce CAC by making organic a sustainable growth channel.

Do You Need Link Building?

Before getting into the deeper research for outsourcing backlink building, the first line of action is to understand whether your website needs them. Yes, there are cases where this might not be the best strategy for your SaaS website. We’ll dive into those a bit later in the article. 

Below, we’ll talk about times when building some backlinks might be exactly what you need to do to grow your website’s organic presence. 

Competition Has Lots of Backlinks

As briefly mentioned before, if your competitors are outranking you consistently, chances are they’re not just publishing content - they're earning links at scale. To check whether that’s true, grab one of the target keywords you are going after and plug it into ahrefs.com. In our scenario, we’ll check the SERP for “budget management software”. Pay attention to the Backlinks column: 

You will notice that this is a very competitive keyword based on the number of backlinks the top 10 results have (the exception is Reddit, which almost always shows up in the top 10). 

If this is the case for the keyword(s) you are aiming to rank for, starting backlink building (or outsourcing it) is a good idea. 

Your Rankings Just Need a Push

Sometimes your SaaS content is solid - but it’s stuck on page two. This is often the case with keywords that have medium to low keyword difficulty. This classic "almost there" scenario where 10-20 strategic links can elevate your ranking happens more often than you think. 

The backlinks act as ranking validators, especially if they come from relevant, authoritative domains within your niche.

Your Content Isn't Ranking at All

If your site is relatively new or your niche is saturated, even great content can go unnoticed. If your domain authority is below 30, Google won't trust or rank content that has no links, no matter how helpful. Links act as discovery channels and trust signals. 

When Not to Outsource Link Building

Outsourcing isn’t always the right move for your SaaS website. Here are some situations where it may not be worth the investment:

• No content foundation: If your website lacks useful, high-quality content to link to, your ROI will be poor. Building out your website from the SEO standpoint (with proper silos, pillar pages, and cluster pages), elaborating on your features and benefits, and writing great content to support all this should be the first step before diving into scaled link building.
  
• Tiny niche with few linking opportunities: Hyper-specific SaaS business verticals might not benefit from traditional outreach. You’d be better off doing strategic link-building with less expense involved.
  
• Ultra-tight budgets: Better to invest in foundational SEO first (site architecture, technical fixes, initial content) before jumping into link building. Almost as in the case with the first example, if you have to choose between link building and content creation because of budget constraints, always go for content. 

Advantages of Outsourcing Link Building for SaaS Professionals

Saves You a Ton of Time

Building high-quality backlinks manually requires hours and hours of prospecting, outreach, negotiation, and follow-up. For busy SaaS founders or lean marketing teams, outsourcing allows them to focus on GTM strategies, product, sales, and retention.

Targeted Link Building Efforts

A great link-building partner brings industry connections and a refined outreach playbook tailored to SaaS. They can secure links from review sites, SaaS directories, niche blogs, and even competitors’ ecosystem partners. 

Faster Results

Aside from having great connections because of years of outreach, agencies have systems: vetted prospect lists, email outreach cadences, and CRM workflows. This infrastructure allows them to generate links at a scale far faster than internal teams starting from scratch.

Can Save You A Lot of Money

While link building isn’t cheap, outsourcing often yields a better ROI than building a team in-house. Just think of link-building salary, training, and tools you will have to invest in. You pay for deliverables, not overhead. According to ZipRecruiter.com, the average link builder salary sits at $130,000/year - now add to that benefits and other recurring expenses, and you’ve got a hefty sum.

Prepare Your Website for Outsourcing Link Building

If you are set on outsourcing your backlinking, there are a couple of things you might need to implement on your website to make sure you are maximizing the ROI. To squeeze as much of the juice from those backlinks as it’s possible, you need to make sure that:

• You have a fast-loading, technically sound site. Look into Core Web Vitals, and check your website’s crawlability and security protocols.
  
• Your website has a good number of high-quality unique articles that provide value to your readers.
  
• You have a well-executed internal link structure, so link equity flows to key pages.

How to Align Link Building with Your SaaS Sales Funnel

To make sure that your backlinking efforts don’t go unnoticed by your bottom line, don’t just build links to blog posts. Consider sending those high-quality backlinks to:

• Top-of-funnel: Thought leadership and SEO blog content to target the variation of short-tail and long-tail keywords that serve as educational/informational content. This will help your SaaS website to establish itself as an authority in the industry. Then, strategically interlink these top-of-funnel pieces with your BOFU pages.
  
• Middle-of-funnel: Your SaaS vs your Competitor or Competitor Alternative pages. These are great to have to try and rank alongside your competition for their brand name. This is a very smart strategy I’ve implemented for one of the construction software companies I’ve worked with and it brought them leads consistently.
  
• Bottom-of-funnel: Case studies, feature pages, pricing pages - choose these pages carefully, as ranking with bottom-of-funnel pages typically requires a lot of backlinks, especially if you are in a competitive space. You’d want to analyze these on a case-by-case base and consult with your link-building partner.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to SaaS Marketing Funnel

How to Choose a Link-Building Agency for Your SaaS Website?

This is extremely important - the part of choosing the right link-building partner for your business can either make or break your SEO performance. While there are a lot of factors that need to be considered in this process, below are the key points you should not overlook. 

Pricing

If you are seeing a very cheap link-building package, run away - 100 times of 100 it consists of spammy backlinks that will hurt your website. The average cost for high-quality SaaS links ranges from $150–$500 depending on DR, traffic, and relevance. Anything below that should raise some questions. 

If you are not paying per link, but a monthly retainer - also be on the lookout for cheap services. Proper outreach requires a ton of time and effort, and no agency that does this on a professional level that brings you relevant backlinks will under charge for their services. 

Transparency

Trustworthy SaaS link-building agencies provide full transparency - live URL sheets, DR/UR metrics of the websites, anchor text usage, and the surrounding content. You should know exactly what you're paying for. Clarify this before committing to any contract.

KPIs

If you are not working towards certain goals, this should sound some alarms. Setting proper expectations is a tone of professionalism and helps to avoid any disappointments down the line. For the purpose of a SaaS link-building campaign, your link-building partner should set clear KPIs, such as:

• Number of links/month
  
• DR/DA thresholds
  
• Organic traffic minimums (of referring domains)
  
• Anchor text ratios
  

Communication

SaaS founders and CMOs want strategic partners, not just vendors. Look for agencies that offer regular calls, detailed reporting, and strategic consultation. 

How Much Does It Cost to Outsource Backlink Building?

Realistically, you're looking at:

• Freelancers: $50–$200 per link
  
• Agencies: $1,500–$10,000/month
  

Costs scale with link quality, niche difficulty, and content production requirements. Don’t be seduced by $99 packages - they almost always involve PBNs or spam.

Types of Backlink Building Services: Agencies vs Freelancers

There are typically two types of link-building services you’ll come across on the market - link-building agencies and freelancers. Depending on where you are with your SaaS business, both offer some pros and cons. 

• Agencies: Best for scale. You get a dedicated team, along with tools, proper processes, and accountability. This is an ideal scenario for SaaS companies with growth budgets.
  
• Freelancers: Better for bootstrapped startups who need a few strategic links. Freelancers also might have great connections, but you need to vet them carefully.
  

SaaS Link-Building Partner Red Flags

When evaluating your potential link-building partner, be on the lookout for the following:

• If you are promised too many backlinks in a short amount of time

This is a classic black-hat move, and those 100 links acquired in 3 days are all spam. Quality link acquisition takes time and proper research. Anyone promising hundreds of links overnight is likely using link farms (PBNs) or automation.

• If you see promises of “guaranteed” anything

"Guaranteed #1 rankings" or "DR90+ links for $50" should be immediate disqualifiers. SEO is probabilistic, not guaranteed.

• If they don’t provide real examples or case studies

A trustworthy partner should be transparent about their past work. If they avoid sharing client case studies, actual backlinks they’ve earned, or examples of content placements, it’s a red flag.  It’s a sign they may not have a proven track record - or worse, they’re hiding shady link-building tactics.

What to Pay Attention to in a Link-Building Strategy?

Now, to be better equipped to work with a link-building partner, any SaaS professional should know what to pay attention to during the implementation of the link-building strategy. 

Anchor Text

Anchor text refers to the text that is used for a hyperlink. It’s one of the most important elements of your link-building strategy because Google keeps a ratio of all the anchor texts that websites use to link back to your domain.

For instance, an exact match anchor text “construction estimating software” is considered more valuable than a partial match anchor text “better construction estimating”. Why? Because the latter refers to your website with the “money” keyword, while the latter is more of an informational query. To keep it on the safe side, it’s better to choose a mix of varied anchors:

• Brand mentions ("Zendesk") - 25%
• Naked URLs - 25%
• Less exact match keywords - 25%
• Partial match keywords - 25%
  

Guest Post Content Production

One of the most common ways to build backlinks is to pitch, create, and publish guest posts on relevant industry sites. While some agencies provide full guest post writing, others need you to supply content.

Check the quality of the content that’s being submitted with your backlink - great content increases acceptance rates and authority. 

What Websites Should You Choose for Link Building?

Vetting websites for link-building is yet another crucial puzzle of link-building. Overlooking this might cost you your website’s authority. 

Prioritize:

• Real traffic (check SimilarWeb, Ahrefs)
• Niche relevance
• Editorial standards
  

Avoid:

• PBNs
• Link directories
• Sites with irrelevant topics

Focus on quality over quantity. Ten links from SaaS-relevant blogs can outperform 100 links from generalist lifestyle sites. Always visit the websites and ask yourself “Would I trust this website?” - if the answer is no, then skip it. 

Tracking the Effectiveness of Your Outsourced Efforts

Once you start working with a link-building partner, it’s important to keep an eye on the progress of the campaign. Typically, with link-building, it takes 2-3 months to start seeing results.

Use Analytical Tools

At the beginning of the campaign, you’d want to take note of the initial standing of the URLs you’ve chosen for your link-building efforts. You can track KPIs using:

• Ahrefs/Moz for backlinks
• Google Search Console for impressions/clicks for URLs
• GA4 for traffic and conversions
  

Report Regularly and Adjust

Have monthly reporting with metrics tied to revenue and SEO goals. If certain link types aren’t performing, shift the strategy.

Want to make link building a growth lever instead of a black hole? Vet your partners, commit to quality, and track performance like you would any growth channel. Check out our link-building page if you are looking for some help with growing your website’s authority.