Most SaaS marketing teams eventually hit the same wall. Content is being published, on-page SEO is in decent shape, and rankings still aren’t moving the way anyone hoped. Usually the missing piece is links — specifically, a deliberate process for getting other websites to reference your content instead
of hoping it happens naturally.
That process is link building outreach, and it’s less mysterious than it’s often made to sound. It’s also slower and more manual than most people expect
going in.
What link building outreach actually is
At its core, outreach means contacting someone at another website and asking them to link to a page on your site. That’s it. The complexity comes from doing it in a way that actually gets a response, rather than getting deleted alongside the twenty other cold pitches sitting in that person’s inbox.
There are a few different outcomes outreach can lead to, and it helps to keep them straight:
An editor reads your resource, thinks it’s genuinely useful, and links to it on their own terms — that’s an earned editorial link. You write a full article
for another site and include a link to your own content within it — that’s a guest post. A publisher already has an article live and agrees to add your link somewhere inside it — that’s a link insertion. And sometimes a site simply charges a fee for the placement, which is a paid link regardless of how it’s framed.
None of these are automatically good or bad. They just carry different levels of editorial control, and different levels of risk if the site turns out to be low quality.
Why SaaS companies bother with this
SaaS categories are crowded. Search “best CRM software” or” project management tool for remote teams” and you’ll find a dozen well-funded companies fighting for the same three ranking positions. Content quality matters, technical SEO matters, but backlinks are still one of the
signals search engines use to judge which pages deserve trust.
There’s also a business case that has nothing to do with rankings. A mention in a respected industry newsletter or a “best tools for X” roundup
puts your product in front of people who are actively evaluating software like yours. Some of that traffic converts regardless of what happens in the search results.
What outreach won’t do is guarantee anything. A handful of new backlinks pointing at a mediocre page isn’t going to outrank a competitor with better content and a stronger site overall. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
Picking a page worth promoting
This step gets skipped more often than it should, and it’s the reason a lot of outreach campaigns fail before the first email even goes out.
Publishers don’t link to things because a company asked politely. They link to things that make their own content better. So before building a prospect
list, look honestly at what you’re proposing to promote. A product page isn’t going to get organic links — nobody wants to send their readers to a pricing
page. Original data, in-depth guides that actually go deeper than what’s already ranking, and free tools or templates tend to work far better.
A marketing automation company, for example, might have internal data on email deliverability across different sending domains. That’s worth building a page around and pitching. A generic “10 marketing automation tips” post is not, because that post already exists a hundred times over.
Finding relevant publishers
Once there’s a page worth promoting, the next question is who would plausibly want to link to it. Relevance matters more than raw site size. A smaller blog that writes specifically about HR technology is a better target for an HR software company
than a massive general business publication that’s never covered the space. The smaller site’s readers are your actual audience, and the smaller site is far more likely to respond.
Good sources for finding these sites include industry blogs, review or comparison sites, startup publications, and — particularly for developer tools
— technical communities where people are already discussing similar products.
Looking at who links to competitors in your space is often the fastest way to build an initial list, since those sites have already shown they’re willing to cover companies like yours.
Is the publisher actually worth pursuing?
Not every site that responds to an email is a site you want a link from. Some sites exist purely to sell placements. They’ll publish almost anything for a fee, have thin or infrequent content, and show little sign of a real audience. A link from a site like this doesn’t do much for you, and in some cases it can actually look worse than having no link at all.
Before investing time in outreach to a given site, it’s worth checking whether the content looks genuinely maintained, whether the site publishes regularly, and whether its existing outbound links go to a reasonable, relevant mix of sources rather than dozens of unrelated companies crammed into old
posts. A site that says yes to everything, instantly, with no real vetting of the pitch, is usually a red flag rather than a lucky break.
Finding the right person
Sending a pitch to a general info@ inbox is close to a wasted email. Most of those addresses get flooded with spam and rarely reach anyone with editorial authority.
Bylines on articles are the most reliable source — if someone wrote a related piece recently, they’re a reasonable first contact. For smaller sites, the person running the blog is often also the founder, which means a personal, direct pitch tends to work better than a formal one. LinkedIn is useful for confirming someone still works there and still handles content, since staff turnover at smaller publications happens more than people expect.
Having an actual reason to reach out
This is where a lot of outreach falls apart. “I love your blog, check out my article” isn’t a reason — it’s a template, and experienced editors can spot one instantly.
A real reason usually comes from something specific about the publisher’s existing content. Maybe they published an article two years ago and the statistics in it are outdated. Maybe they’ve listed similar tools in a roundup and yours is a reasonable, honest addition to that list. Maybe there’s a broken link on the page pointing to a resource that no longer exists, and you happen to have something that could replace it.
A cyber security SaaS company might notice that a publisher’s phishing prevention article hasn’t been updated since attack tactics shifted, and offer
a short addition based on patterns they’re actually seeing with customers. That’s a real pitch. “We have great content, please link to us” is not.
Creating something worth linking to
Sometimes the opportunity doesn’t exist yet — it needs to be created. This might mean pitching a full guest post on a topic the site hasn’t covered,
offering a data point they can cite in something they’re already writing, or suggesting an addition to an existing resource page.
The trick here is making it genuinely easy for the publisher to say yes. If you’re pitching a guest post, have a specific angle in mind rather than a vague topic. If you’re offering data, make sure it’s something they can actually use, not just a marketing claim dressed up as a statistic.
Writing the outreach email
Short and specific beats long and polished almost every time. Here’s a realistic example:
Subject: Small addition to your CRM integration piece
Hi Daniel,
I came across your article comparing native CRM integrations to Zapier-based
ones — solid breakdown, especially the part on data sync limits.
One thing that might be worth adding: we’ve seen some pretty different sync delay behavior depending on which integration method is used, and we wrote up the specifics here in case it’s useful for and update: [https://royalgrowthagency.digital]
No worries either way, just thought it might be relevant given what you already covered.
Thanks,
Unaiza
Notice there’s no forced compliment, no bullet-pointed value proposition, and no explicit “please link to us.” The ask is implied, and the email reads like it came from someone who actually read the article.
Following up
One follow-up, sent about a week later, is usually enough. A second one can work if it’s short and adds something new — maybe an updated version of the resource, or a slightly different angle. Beyond that, it starts looking like pressure rather than a reminder, and it can hurt the relationship for future
outreach to that same site.
Reviewing what comes back
Not every “yes” is worth accepting. When a publisher responds, it’s worth checking where exactly the link would go — a contextual mention
within the body of an article is worth more than something buried in a footer or sidebar widget. If there’s a fee involved, it’s fair to weigh that against how relevant and well-trafficked the site actually is, rather than accepting or rejecting based on price alone.
For more detail on evaluating placement opportunities, seepublisher placement options.
Keeping track of it all
A simple spreadsheet does the job here: publisher name, contact, date reached out, what was pitched, response, and the final link if one goes live. Response rates on outreach tend to be low — often a small percentage of total emails sent — so having a record prevents wasted effort re-contacting the same sites and helps identify which types of pitches actually get traction over time.
Common mistakes
The biggest one is treating outreach as a numbers game — sending the same message to two hundred sites and hoping a handful respond. It rarely works, and it can damage a domain’s reputation with publishers who talk to each other more than people assume.
Other recurring issues: pitching pages that don’t offer the publisher’s readers anything new, ignoring whether a site is actually relevant in favor of chasing high domain authority numbers, skipping follow-ups entirely, and accepting cheap paid placements on low-quality sites just to hit an internal
monthly target.
Outreach vs guest posting vs link insertions
These terms get used loosely, but they describe different things. Outreach is the umbrella activity — the act of contacting sites to ask for a link,
whatever form that link takes. Guest posting means writing a complete piece of content for someone else’s site. Link insertions mean asking for a link inside something that’s already published, with no new writing involved.
Guest posts take longer to produce but often come with more room to shape the surrounding content. Insertions are quicker, but they only work when there’s an existing article where the link genuinely fits — forcing one into an unrelated piece tends to be obvious to both the publisher and, eventually, to search engines.
For a deeper comparison, read
guest posting vs link insertions.
Timeline and realistic expectations
Outreach is slow. Building a solid list of prospects can take a few days on its own. Getting a reply, if one comes at all, often takes one to three weeks.
Multiply that across dozens of prospects and a single campaign can easily run a month or more before the first link goes live.
This is part of why outreach doesn’t work well as a one-time push before a launch. It tends to work better as something run consistently, month over month, so the slow response times don’t leave gaps in results.
Measuring results
Link count alone is a poor way to judge a campaign. A more useful set of signals includes the number of genuinely relevant domains linking to you over time, referral traffic actually coming from those links, and how response and acceptance rates change depending on which pitch or prospect list was used.
Ranking movement is worth watching too, but on a timeline of months rather than days, and alongside other factors like content updates or technical fixes that might be happening at the same time.
FAQ
Does link building outreach still work?
Yes, though it rewards relevance and quality more than it used to. Search engines have gotten better at recognizing links that look purchased or unnatural, so a smaller number of genuinely relevant links tends to outperform a large volume of low-quality ones.
How many links does a SaaS company need each month?
There’s no universal number. It depends on the competitiveness of the category, the existing link profile, and how much content is being produced. Consistency tends to matter more than hitting a specific quota.
Is paying for links a bad idea?
It carries more risk, particularly if the site is low quality or the placement looks unnatural. Some companies use paid placements as part of a broader
strategy, but it’s worth understanding the guidelines and risks before relying on it heavily.
Should this be handled in-house or outsourced?
Both approaches work. In-house teams usually understand the product better; outside teams often bring existing publisher relationships and the bandwidth to run outreach at a scale that’s hard to manage internally.
Final takeaway
None of this is complicated in theory. Find something worth linking to, find the right publisher and the right person there, and give them an honest reason
to include your link. The difficulty is almost entirely in the execution — the research, the personalization, and the patience required to do it well over time.
For SaaS and technology companies that would rather not build this process from scratch, Royal Growth Agency handles B2B SaaS link building end to end, from identifying relevant publishers to securing placements that are actually worth having.