How to Get Dofollow Backlinks for Your SaaS in 2026

A link is dofollow by default. It passes ranking signal (the thing people still loosely call PageRank). A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow", which since 2019 Google treats as a hint it may or may not honor. Two narrower variants exist: rel="sponsored" for paid and affiliate links, and rel="ugc" for forum and comment links. For planning, assume sponsored and ugc behave like nofollow for ranking and judge a link by whether it is plain dofollow.

Domain authority is not a Google metric. Moz DA, Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR), and Semrush Authority Score are third-party 0-100 estimates of link strength, and they are logarithmic: moving a new site from DR 10 to DR 20 is far easier than 50 to 60. Use these scores to compare two link prospects, not as the goal itself. The goal is relevant referring domains.

A healthy profile is mixed. If every link is dofollow with the same keyword anchor, that pattern alone looks engineered. nofollow links from high-traffic, on-topic places still send real visitors and brand searches, and they frequently trigger natural dofollow links later when someone discovers you there and writes about you.

Ship where your stack already lives. Integration, marketplace, and showcase pages are often dofollow and topically perfect: the Zapier and Make app directories, Stripe Apps, the Vercel, Supabase, and Cloudflare showcases, and the Notion, Figma, or Shopify marketplaces. Building one real integration plus its listing is one of the few genuinely dofollow links you fully control.

Use developer platforms as discovery engines. Publishing a package (npm, PyPI, Packagist), an open-source repo, or a starter template earns mentions from dependency graphs, awesome-lists, and tutorials. GitHub README links and most package pages are nofollow, but they drive the discovery that produces dofollow links from blogs and docs downstream.

Write where article links stay dofollow. Body links in dev.to, Hashnode, and many Indie Hackers posts are commonly dofollow, and cross-posting your own engineering writing there is fast. A realistic target is 15 to 30 referring domains in 90 days, which is roughly what moves a brand-new domain from DR 0 into the DR 10 to 20 range.

Original data outperforms opinion every time. A small state-of-your-niche survey (even 200 respondents), a public benchmark, or a maintained statistics page gives writers something concrete to cite, and a citation is usually a dofollow link. Linkable assets such as a free calculator, a genuinely free tier of one feature, or a public API attract links passively for years.

Journalist sourcing changed in 2026. HARO is gone (Connectively shut down in late 2024), so the live options are Featured.com, Qwoted, Help a B2B Writer, and SourceBottle. Quotes that get published on news and industry sites are typically dofollow. Budget for volume: answering 20 to 30 queries to land 2 to 4 placements is normal.

Guest posts and comparison content close the gap. Pitch niche blogs and newsletters with one specific article idea, not a generic offer; realistic outreach math is 50 personalized emails, 10 to 15 replies, and 3 to 6 published links. On your own site, build honest alternatives-to-X and head-to-head comparison pages, which earn links from people already researching your category.

Most free directory links are nofollow. Product Hunt outbound links are nofollow, and G2, Capterra, and many large listings are too. That does not make them worthless: a Product Hunt launch or a G2 profile drives qualified referral traffic and branded searches that help rankings indirectly. Just do not count them as dofollow link equity in your plan.

Curated niche directories are a different tool, and worth being precise about. codenation.dev, the project this guide ships with, is a small editorial SaaS directory, and its model is the common honest one: a free listing is a nofollow link plus a spot next to competitors your buyers compare, while featured or sponsored placements are dofollow because they were paid for. Value it first for relevant referral traffic and category context; treat the dofollow upgrade as a bonus, not the reason to list.

Choose directories the way a buyer would. Pick ones your actual customers browse, check the rel attribute before paying (view source and search for rel="nofollow"), and prefer a handful of relevant niche listings over blasting 200 generic ones, which reads as a spam footprint rather than a signal.

Skip anything sold by volume. The 10,000-backlinks-for-$20 Fiverr gigs, private blog networks (PBNs), sitewide footer links, large-scale link exchanges, and blog-comment or forum-signature spam are precisely what Google's link spam systems (SpamBrain) discount or penalize. Best case you waste money; worst case you collect a manual action that is slow to undo.

Watch your anchor text. A natural profile is mostly branded and URL anchors (your product name, codenation.dev, even click here), with only a small share of keyword-rich anchors. If 40 percent of your links use the same money keyword, that is a footprint, not a strategy.

Disavow rarely. Google ignores most spammy links automatically, so the disavow tool is for a confirmed manual action or a clear negative-SEO attack, not routine housekeeping. Spending hours disavowing random links is usually wasted effort.

Weeks 1 to 2, foundation: set up Google Search Console and one backlink tracker (Ahrefs or Semrush if you can pay, otherwise Search Console plus a free tool), list on 8 to 12 relevant directories while noting which are dofollow, submit your package or integration where it applies, and publish two cross-posts on dev.to and Hashnode.

Weeks 3 to 8, assets and outreach: ship one linkable asset (a data study, free tool, or public benchmark), answer 3 to 5 journalist queries a week on Featured and Qwoted, and send 10 to 15 personalized guest-post or mention pitches a week.

Weeks 9 to 12, compound: build comparison and alternatives pages, repurpose the data study into a press pitch, and ask integration partners to add you to their docs or showcase. A realistic 90-day outcome for a new SaaS is 15 to 30 referring domains, with 5 to 10 of them dofollow and on-topic, which is enough to start ranking for long-tail and branded terms.