How to get backlinks for SaaS in 2026

This channel is unusually productive for SaaS because the major software review sites give away DR 90+ dofollow links for free. G2 (DR 91), Capterra (DR 91), and SourceForge (DR 92) all accept free listings and all pass dofollow link equity. Those three alone can move a new domain's DR further than most guest post campaigns in the same time period, and with far less ongoing effort.

Below that tier sit dozens of product directories in the DR 50-80 range: SaaSHub (DR 79), Indie Hackers (DR 81), BetaList (DR 75), and others that accept free or very low-cost submissions. The full ranked list is on the best SaaS directories page, and the directory submission guide walks through how to prepare a copy kit and the order to submit in. For dofollow-specific filtering, see the dofollow directories list.

What this channel is not: a shortcut to ranking for competitive keywords. A competitor at DR 70 will not be displaced by directory links alone. But for a brand-new domain, reaching DR 20-30 within three months through quality directory submissions is realistic and sets the foundation for every channel that follows.

The honest catch: selectivity is everything. There are hundreds of low-DR, nofollow, or unindexed directories that pass zero link equity. The ones below are specifically chosen for dofollow links and real measured Domain Rating, starting with the free ones.

Launch platforms (Product Hunt, Hacker News, BetaList, Fazier, Peerlist) exist for launch-day traffic, not permanent link equity. Product Hunt (DR 91) and Hacker News (DR 91) are both nofollow. What they do is put your product in front of thousands of early adopters in a compressed window, and that visibility earns natural dofollow links from newsletters, blogs, and recap posts that write about what they find. A Product Hunt launch with a few hundred upvotes will typically produce three to eight organic mentions in tech publications within the following week, each with a dofollow link your submission form never touched.

The effort here is front-loaded and timing-sensitive. A Product Hunt launch requires a polished product, good gallery assets, and a community ready to support on the day. A half-prepared launch is worse than no launch: it spends the one opportunity for launch-day momentum and produces nothing. The Product Hunt alternatives guide covers the full landscape of launch platforms if you want to stack a few smaller ones in the same week to amplify the spike.

BetaList (DR 75) is the exception in this group: it is dofollow and functions as both a launch-day platform and a permanent authority link. If you are in pre-launch or early access, submit to BetaList as part of your directory round, not just your launch-week push.

Sites like AlternativeTo (DR 79), alternative.me (DR 75), and OpenAlternative (DR 51) host thousands of "alternatives to [Competitor]" pages. Each of those pages represents a backlink opportunity and ranks for comparison-intent searches like "alternatives to Notion" or "tools like Slack." AlternativeTo does not pass a dofollow link, but with DR 79 and real traffic it is still worth the five minutes to claim a listing. alternative.me does pass dofollow and is the stronger choice for link equity.

The action for this channel is straightforward: identify your top two or three competitors and submit your product as an alternative on each major platform. OpenAlternative accepts submissions via a GitHub pull request, which keeps the process transparent and the editorial bar higher than a free-for-all form. If you are building your own comparison pages, the build-an-alternative-to pages on SaaSCity can help identify which competitor alternatives have real organic search volume.

This channel is consistently skipped by early-stage SaaS teams. The effort is about 20 minutes per platform, and the links plus comparison-query traffic persist indefinitely once you are listed.

Every major SaaS platform with a public app marketplace or technology partner directory is a potential source of a contextual, editorial, high-DR dofollow link. The mechanic is simple: build a working integration or apply to a partner program, and your product appears in a searchable directory hosted on a domain your target buyers use daily.

These links are qualitatively different from directory links. They are editorially chosen (the platform decides to feature your integration), contextually relevant (you are listed alongside tools that serve the same customers), and they sit on domains with DR 70-95 that are directly associated with the software category you are targeting. A link from Zapier's app directory or Stripe's partner page carries more trust signal than most directory submissions.

The requirement is real work: a functioning integration, a public API, or a formal partner application. Start with the integrations your existing customers already ask for, since those will drive both link acquisition and product adoption simultaneously. For each major platform in your space, check whether they have a published marketplace or partner directory before you start building.

A well-executed benchmark report or industry survey earns links because journalists and bloggers need to cite sources, and they prefer citing original data over repeating stats that already appear in ten other articles. For SaaS, this typically means publishing anonymized benchmarks derived from your own product data, or running a focused survey of your target audience and writing up the findings.

The key word is "original." Repackaging public statistics that already circulate widely does not earn press coverage. What earns it is data that nobody has published, especially if the finding cuts against a widely held assumption in your category. The distribution step matters as much as the research: a report published as a blog post and not pitched to journalists will sit unread.

Start this channel after directories and launch platforms are done. You need at least six months of real product data to be interesting, and the production and distribution process takes weeks. Even well-executed data studies sometimes fail to pick up press. Treat it as a long-term investment, not a first-quarter tactic.

Guest posting (writing articles for other publications in exchange for a byline link) works for SaaS when targeted at the right places: industry newsletters that accept contributed pieces, category-specific blogs, and tech publications that cover your exact space. Links from these are often editorial choices rather than guaranteed placements, so you cannot always specify the anchor text or count on the link at all. But the brand exposure, referral traffic, and credibility signals have real value even when the dofollow link does not materialize.

The honest tradeoff: a guest post campaign requires identifying targets, pitching, writing 1000-2000 word articles, and waiting for editorial review. Realistic output is two to four placements per month with consistent effort. In the same four weeks, four hours of directory submissions can produce 12-20 dofollow links from DR 50+ sites. Directories come first. Guest posts are a sustained layer you add after the base is in place, because they earn different kinds of links (editorial, topical, from publications your buyers trust) that directories cannot replicate.

Connectively (formerly HARO), Help a B2B Writer, Featured.com, and Terkel all let you respond to journalist queries and earn a citation with usually a dofollow link. The barrier is low: subscribe to the digest, scan for relevant queries, respond with a good quote and your credentials. The conversion rate on well-matched pitches runs around 10-20%, and for most SaaS categories there are only a handful of relevant queries per week.

A founder spending one hour per week responding to HARO queries will earn one to two quality links per month on average. That is a good return on one hour, but it will not anchor a link building strategy on its own. Subscribe and respond whenever a query is an exact fit for your expertise; do not build a workflow around it until the other channels are producing results.