How a new SaaS gets its first links

A new product has no links, so search engines find it late and rank it nowhere. Its first links come from places where the product already exists: its code, its integrations, its launch, and the few pages that have a reason to cite it. Check each link's attribute as you go. Many of these links are nofollow, and that is fine: their value is the people who click them.

Start with the pages you control

Create the profiles that point to the product and use the same name and one-line description on each: a GitHub organization and the README of any public repository, the package pages if you publish an SDK (npm, PyPI), a LinkedIn company page, a Crunchbase entry, the founders' own profiles. Most of these links are nofollow. They still tie the brand together across sites and give crawlers a path to the product's domain.

Integrations and marketplaces

If the product connects to another tool, that tool's list of integrations is the most relevant page that can mention it: app directories such as Zapier's, the Stripe App Marketplace, the Chrome Web Store, or the integrations page of a framework or a host. Getting there takes a working integration, which is also a reason for users to choose the product. Whether the listing's link is followed depends on each marketplace: read it on a live listing before counting on it.

Launch where people try new products

Product Hunt, Hacker News and Indie Hackers send visitors on the day of a launch, and some of those visitors later write about what they found. Read each community's rules first. Hacker News, for example, accepts a Show HN only for something people can run or hold, that you worked on yourself and are around to discuss; it refuses landing pages and fundraisers, and asks you not to get friends to upvote or comment (Show HN guidelines).

The same guidelines ask that people can try the project without creating an account, since that brings more feedback. Plan to spend the launch day answering comments.

Publish something worth citing

Editorial links come from pages that need a reference: a tutorial that uses your library, a comparison that includes your product, an article that quotes a figure. A free tool that solves one small problem in your field, documentation that explains a topic clearly, or data you collected yourself and publish with its method are things other writers link to without being asked.

Answer journalists' requests

Some services pass journalists' requests for sources on to experts, which is a way to be quoted in articles. The best known, Help a Reporter Out (HARO), was renamed Connectively by its owner Cision in 2024; Cision then stopped offering it and announced the sale of HARO to Featured.com on 15 April 2025. Qwoted and SourceBottle work on the same principle.

Answer only the requests in your field, with a short and specific answer the journalist can quote as it is. Whether the published article links to you, and how, is the publication's decision.

Directories: a few, chosen as a buyer would

Google's spam policies count "low-quality directory or bookmark site links" as link spam, as well as requiring a link in terms of service. A directory deserves a listing when it covers your field, when its listing pages are indexed (search site: with its domain and the name of a tool it lists), when a person reviews submissions, and when it does not ask for a link back as a condition.

Packages that submit a product to hundreds of directories at once produce the pattern those policies describe. Pick a handful of relevant listings that people looking for a tool like yours actually read.

What to leave aside

Links bought for ranking, link exchanges and links placed in the footer of many sites are all on Google's list of link spam. If you pay for a placement because its audience is right, ask for the link to carry rel="sponsored": you keep the visitors without the risk. The guide on link attributes explains each value.

Measure what arrived

Keep a short list: the page that links to you, the date, the attribute, and the visits it sent according to your analytics. Search Console's Links report shows a sample of the sites that link to you; Google says it is not a comprehensive list. Drop the sources that send neither visitors nor indexed links.

Sources

Read on 27 October 2026.