If you are running a SaaS business and working to optimize the off-page SEO of your SaaS business, you might have heard about SaaS Competitor Backlink Analysis.
A Definitive Guide on SaaS Competitor Backlink Analysis
SaaS industries are increasing with high growth, and with this high growth, competitors are also growing for every SaaS company. To stay ahead of your competitors, you need to understand and analyse their strategies to rank on search engines. Analysing competitor’s strategies is one of the most powerful ways to build an effective strategy for business success.
What are the backlinks?
Backlinks are the hyperlinks that redirect users to your website when they click on a link on another website. Backlinks tell search engines about the credibility of your website.
Backlinks also help increase traffic on your website, increase your authority score, and help search engines find your content more quickly.
Benefits of high-quality backlinks for SaaS businesses
Being a SaaS business company, having a strong online presence is essential for attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. A well-developed backlink-building strategy can help SaaS businesses improve search engine rankings, credibility, traffic, and brand awareness.
Help in search engine rankings.
Backlinks help our content rank better on search engines. They indicate that the content is valuable and created to help users, which helps drive organic traffic to the website.
Improve the credibility of the website.
Backlinks do not only help your content rank on search engines, they also act as a validation of your content’s relevancy and increase the credibility of the website.
Increase referral traffic
Backlinks send users to your website from other websites and that leads to an increase in organic traffic. This can also help in lead generation and reduce customer acquisition costs.
Brand Awareness
Linking from authoritative websites can increase brand awareness by sending new users to your website. Having backlinks from different websites strengthens your online presence.
Stay ahead of the competitors.
Analyse your and your competitor’s websites to see if there is a link-building gap. This will help you find new link opportunities and stay ahead of your competitors in gaining high-quality links.
Why is SaaS Competitor Backlink Analysis important?
You can understand who is linking to your competitors and why by SaaS Competitor backlink analysis. Understanding these who and why can open backlink opportunities for your SaaS business. You can identify high-quality sites that link to your competitors and you can target them to gain backlinks for your site.
This SaaS Competitor Backlink Analysis helps you benchmark your SEO efforts and also opens opportunities for guest posting, collaboration, and content creation. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor’s backlink profile, you can develop a more effective and competitive SEO strategy.
Google has more than 200 ranking factors, and it changes its algorithms with updates, but backlinks always remain the main ranking factor.
How to conduct a SaaS SEO Competitor Analysis?
SaaS Competitor Backlink Analysis requires strong analytical skills and effort. Here is a step-by-step guide to simplify the process.
Find SEO competitors
To understand the competitor’s backlink strategy, it is essential to understand who your competitor is. You might already know your competitors, but if you don’t know, then just type some of your business keywords or services you provide and check who is ranking for those keywords.
If the search result includes sponsored ads, that simply means your competitors are spending money in Google Ads to sponsor their ads and attract traffic to their websites. Remember to list down all of your competitors in a spreadsheet. You can identify your competitors by using a competitor analysis tool.
Some tips to identify your competitors
- Start by finding businesses that offer similar SaaS products or SaaS services in your industry.
- Identify companies that have similar audiences and the same customer base as your SaaS services.
- Search your seed keywords and list the top-ranking websites. These are your direct competitors.
- Use backlink analysis tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz to find websites with similar backlink profiles to your own.
Find competitor’s target keywords.
If you are done with the first process and you have the list of your competitors in your hand, then start with a thorough research for their targeted keywords. There are various B2B keyword research tools that can help you in finding out your competitor’s keywords.
Bonus Read: Top SaaS SEO Tools to Outrank Competitors in 2024
Top 5 Tools you can use to find competitor’s target keywords
- Semrush
- Moz
- Ahrefs
- Answer the public
- Ubersuggest
List all the valuables they are ranking for, and mainly focus on keywords related to your business that have high search volume and low keyword difficulty.
Analyze their backlinks profile.
As we have already mentioned in the blog, SaaS Competitor Backlink Analysis is an integral part of the SEO optimization process. Check the competitor’s backlink profile and find the authority websites that are not linked to your website. Look at how your competitor has acquired the link and build a strategy to gain backlinks from the opportunities.
Tools you can use to analyze competitor’s backlinks
- Semrush
- Moz
- Ahrefs
List down the websites, create your backlink strategy, and stay ahead of your competitors.
Analyze their content marketing strategy.
Content is the king when it comes to making SEO strategies for SaaS businesses. High-quality content and relevant content can help you rank higher on search engines. Creating content is a difficult task, and it takes a lot of effort, research, and writing skills to create compelling content.
Analyzing your competitor’s content strategy will give you an idea for creating an engaging content strategy for your website.
Analyze their social media accounts.
Social media can make your business a brand. Check your competitor’s social media accounts and their content strategy, monitor their ads on social media platforms, measure their engagement rate, and check the content type they post the most.
Build a strategy
After analyzing your competitor’s targeted keywords, backlink profile, content strategy, and social media accounts:
- Build your plan and implement that on your website to acquire a higher position on search engines.
- Create content that answers and solves your customer’s query.
- Do more than just focus on rankings and build content for your customers.
Strategies for building high-quality backlinks for SaaS Businesses
Creating high-quality content
Content can make you shine in your digital presence. High-quality content has the power to convert a visitor into a customer. Write content that describes your niche and attracts backlinks.
Guest blogging
Guest blogging is one of the most powerful ways of earning links. Find authority sites on Google and send them a pitch message for guest posting. Make sure your content is relevant to the blog posting site’s audience.
Guest blogging sites allow users to post only if the blog content is unique, not plagiarized, and relevant to their site.
How to search for guest posting sites?
To search for a guest posting site, simply go to any search engine and type.
“your niche”+ “write for us”
“your niche”+ “guest post”
“your niche”+ “submit an article”
“your niche”+ “contribute a guest post”
“your niche”+ “become a guest blogger”
“your niche”+ “submit a guest post”
Influencer Outreach
Outreach to influencers who are already working in your niche. Build a strong relationship with them by sharing their content and providing value before reaching for backlinks. Influencers can help you gain wide traffic on your website because they have a large fan base on social media platforms.
Fix broken links
Search for broken links on highly authoritative websites using tools such as Check My Links, Ahrefs, and broken link checker. After searching for the broken link, reach out to the owner of the website and pitch them for your content as a replacement for the broken link.
Link exchange
You can reach out to websites for link exchange because it will mutually benefit both businesses. Always prefer exchanging links on relevant business websites.
Monitor your competitor
As we mentioned above, SaaS competitor backlink analysis is a crucial part of building high-quality links. Monitor your competitor’s backlinks to identify opportunities. You can target sites that are linked to your competitor’s site but not to yours.
Some additional strategies for more effective competitor backlink analysis for the SaaS industry.
Identify competitor’s top-performing content.
Identify their top-performing content and check what type of content resonates the most with your target audience and earns the most backlinks. By researching this, you can build your own content strategy to earn the most backlinks.
Factors to consider while analyzing their content
- Check the information provided in the content and does it provide a solution to customers’ queries?
- Do they use images, infographics, or videos to make it more engaging? Count the number of images.
- Identify how your competitors promoted their content to earn backlinks.
Identify their backlink sources.
By looking at your competitor’s backlinks you can find websites that are linked with your competitor’s website. These websites can help you in your link-building strategies.
You can find these websites with tools like Ahref’s Link Intersect Feature or any other tool. It will let you know the website’s link to several of your competitors. If a site is linked with multiple competitors, they might also link to you. Note down the websites, contact the owners, and pitch them for link-building opportunities.
Analyse competitor’s anchor text
The anchor text used by your competitors can provide you with an idea of their SEO strategies. Analyze their anchor text and understand their patterns.
If your competitor is using anchor text that contains a specific keyword related to your industry, this means this keyword is important for your SEO.
Check their backlinks with their brand name. If they are highly using their brand name as an anchor text that means they are working to increase brand awareness.
If they are using a consistent keyword as their anchor text, then you can also use their strategy.
Conclusion
Backlinks are essential when we talk about ranking our website on search engines because they help search engines understand a website’s authority. Conducting a competitor backlink analysis for your SaaS business can be a powerful strategy to enhance your SEO efforts and improve your search engine rankings. By analyzing frequently linked websites to your competitor’s site and their anchor text and understanding the patterns they use in their backlink profile, you can develop a better SEO strategy and stay ahead of them.
A strong competitor analysis can help you target high-quality backlinks and develop a natural-looking backlink profile.
Frequently Askes Questions (FAQ’s)
Q.1 Why competitor backlink analysis is essential for SaaS businesses?
Competitor backlink analysis is helpful for SaaS businesses because it helps us understand their SEO and backlink strategies. By doing proper research we can improve our own search engine rankings.
Q.2 What are the tools used for SaaS competitor backlink analysis?
There are many SEO tools available for competitor backlink analysis, which provide information about competitors’ backlinks and anchor text strategies. Here are the top three tools used for competitor backlink analysis.
- Semrush
- Moz
- Ahrefs
Q.3 How competitor link analysis can help me in my link-building efforts?
With thorough research, you can identify the website that frequently links to your competitor’s website. You can reach them for link-building opportunities and build valuable backlinks for your SaaS business.
Q.4 What are the tools used to analyze the website’s performance
Google Analytics and Google Search Console are used to analyse the website’s performance and these analytics help us in building new marketing strategies.
