Backlink Analysis for SaaS: 4 Steps to Improve Your SEO in 2025

Backlinks are a cornerstone of SEO success, especially for SaaS businesses striving to enhance their domain authority, drive organic traffic, and increase visibility. However, not all backlinks are created equal. To truly understand how your backlink profile is influencing your SEO performance, you need to perform regular backlink analysis.

In 2025, having a robust backlink analysis process is essential for identifying the right links to build and cleaning up toxic links that could harm your rankings. In this blog, we’ll break down backlink analysis into four simple, actionable steps, specifically tailored for SaaS businesses. With this guide, you’ll be able to assess the quality of your backlinks, identify opportunities for growth, and improve your SEO strategy.

1. Gather Your Backlink Data Using SEO Tools

What it is:Before you can analyze your backlinks, you need to gather data. SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz allow you to crawl your website and identify all the backlinks pointing to your domain. These tools will also give you key metrics like domain authority, anchor text, and referring domains.

Why it works for SaaS:For SaaS businesses, backlink data can reveal which of your content assets are attracting the most links, which referring domains are most valuable, and which links could be helping or hindering your SEO efforts. By analyzing this data, you can make informed decisions on where to focus your link-building strategy.

How to do it right:

• Use Ahrefs or SEMrush: Start by inputting your website URL into an SEO tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush. These tools will give you a comprehensive list of backlinks, along with important metrics such as referring domains, anchor text, and link types.

• Filter out irrelevant links: Look at your backlink profile and eliminate any irrelevant or low-quality backlinks. If a backlink is coming from a spammy site or unrelated niche, it’s time to clean it up.

SaaS Insight: According to Ahrefs, 90.63% of pages don’t receive any organic search traffic at all, highlighting the importance of building strong backlinks to rank higher on Google. For SaaS businesses, backlinks from authoritative industry websites, blogs, or publications are the most valuable. Aim to analyze these sources and ensure they’re consistently linking to your best content.

2. Evaluate Link Quality: Focus on Authority, Relevance, and Trustworthiness

What it is:Not all backlinks are created equal. Some come from high-authority, trusted sources, while others may come from low-quality, spammy websites. Evaluating the quality of your backlinks is crucial to understanding how they impact your rankings.

Why it works for SaaS:For SaaS businesses, the quality of backlinks matters much more than the quantity. Links from authoritative, relevant websites will carry much more weight than those from random sites or irrelevant niches. The goal is to have backlinks from sources that Google trusts.

How to do it right:

• Assess domain authority (DA): Look at the domain authority of the websites linking to you. A backlink from a high DA site (such as industry blogs or authoritative publications) will boost your rankings much more than a link from a site with low DA.

• Check for relevance: Ensure that the backlinks are coming from websites that are relevant to your SaaS industry. A link from a project management blog, for example, is more valuable than one from a general lifestyle blog.

• Use tools for analysis: Tools like Moz’s Link Explorer or Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR) will help you determine the authority of the linking domains.

  
  

SaaS Example:A study by Backlinko found that the top-ranking pages on Google tend to have an average 50% more backlinks than the average page, proving that quality backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors. If your SaaS is in the customer relationship management (CRM) space, a backlink from a well-known marketing or sales-focused website will be much more valuable than a link from a cooking blog.

3. Disavow Toxic Backlinks

What it is:Toxic backlinks are links from spammy, low-quality, or irrelevant websites that can harm your website’s SEO performance. These backlinks can negatively impact your domain authority and even lead to a penalty from Google. It’s important to disavow these links to maintain a healthy backlink profile.

Why it works for SaaS: SaaS businesses are often targeted by low-quality websites trying to generate backlinks through shady practices like link farms or comment spam. Disavowing toxic backlinks ensures that Google doesn’t associate your site with these bad practices, which could otherwise hinder your rankings.

How to do it right:

• Identify toxic links: Use tools like Ahrefs or Google Search Console to identify backlinks that could be harmful to your site’s SEO. These may come from irrelevant sites, link farms, or suspicious domains.

• Disavow links in Google Search Console: Once you’ve identified toxic links, upload a list of them to Google’s Disavow Tool to inform Google that you don’t want them to count towards your link profile.

  
  

SaaS Tip: According to Google, “toxic” backlinks can directly impact your site’s ranking ability. In fact, Google has devalued backlinks from low-quality sources in its algorithm, so it’s critical to monitor your backlink profile frequently. If your SaaS has a history of rapid growth and backlink acquisition, it’s especially important to regularly check for toxic backlinks. These can hurt your rankings, so take the time to clean up your backlink profile.

4. Leverage Backlink Opportunities for Growth

What it is: Once you've assessed the quality of your backlinks, the next step is to identify opportunities for improvement. This could involve reaching out to high-authority websites for backlinks, creating more valuable content that attracts organic links, or even analyzing competitor backlinks for link-building inspiration.

Why it works for SaaS: According to Content Marketing Institute, 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing to drive SEO results, and creating link-worthy content is one of the best ways to attract valuable backlinks. For SaaS companies, consistently building high-quality backlinks is key to ranking for competitive keywords. Identifying new opportunities and executing a proactive link-building strategy will ensure your SaaS business stays competitive in search results.

How to do it right:

• Analyze competitor backlinks: Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush allow you to spy on your competitors' backlink profiles. Identify the sources of their high-quality backlinks and reach out to those same sources for your own link-building opportunities.

• Create link-worthy content: Invest in creating high-quality, shareable content (like case studies, research reports, and industry guides) that naturally attracts backlinks.

Example: If your SaaS is focused on data analytics, publish an in-depth whitepaper on the state of analytics in your industry. This type of content is likely to attract backlinks from relevant, authoritative sites.

Bottom-line

Backlink analysis is a critical aspect of any SEO strategy, especially for SaaS businesses in 2025. By following these four steps—gathering backlink data, evaluating link quality, disavowing toxic backlinks, and identifying new opportunities—you’ll be well on your way to improving your backlink profile and driving more organic traffic to your site.

Regular backlink analysis ensures that you are building a healthy link profile, free from harmful links and full of high-quality, authoritative backlinks that will help your SaaS business rank higher and attract more qualified leads.