How to Get Backlinks for a New SaaS in Europe

The advice around SaaS backlinks gets strange very quickly.

You launch a domain. Google barely knows it exists. Search Console is quiet. Then you search for backlinks for SaaS and find people offering 50, 100 or 200 directory submissions. Some promise a higher domain rating. Some promise Google rankings. A few now add ChatGPT visibility to the package.

The spreadsheet looks reassuring because every row can be completed. Search results for “free SaaS backlinks” make the same approach look almost routine.

I would resist that feeling.

A new SaaS does need links. Google says links are one of the signals it uses to understand relevance and to discover new pages.^1 But Google also classifies links created primarily to manipulate search rankings as link spam.^2 Those two facts produce a more useful question than “how many directories can I submit to?”

Which links would make sense if nobody had invented domain rating?

For a European SaaS founder, I would try to build the first ten links from places that explain something real about the company: who operates it, what the product does, which ecosystem it belongs to, who uses it, and why another site had a reason to mention it.

Ten is enough to make the exercise concrete. It is not an SEO threshold. There is no magic number at which a young domain becomes authoritative.

What good startup backlinks actually need to do

A founder with a new website is usually trying to solve three problems at once.

The first is discovery. Search engines need paths to find the site and understand how its pages relate to the rest of the web.

The second is credibility. A company looks less isolated when other relevant sites describe it consistently. An investor database, an ecosystem profile, a customer page and an industry publication all add different context.

The third is referral traffic. A link can send an actual person.

These jobs are easy to blur together. A page can be useful for discovery and send no customers. A niche newsletter can send five excellent prospects while contributing very little to whatever SEO score a tool happens to display. A giant directory can have an impressive metric and still be irrelevant to the people who might buy the product.

This is why I would not organize the first ten backlinks by domain rating.

I would organize them by reason for existence.

Start with profiles you should have anyway

The easiest legitimate backlinks are attached to profiles that make the company easier to inspect.

For a European startup, Dealroom is an obvious example. Founders can claim or create a company profile, add company information, and use the profile to present the startup to an ecosystem that includes investors, corporates and public-sector organizations.^3 StartupBlink also lets founders add a startup to its global ecosystem map.^4 F6S profiles serve another purpose for teams applying to accelerators, grants and startup programs.^5

These are records in different parts of the startup ecosystem. They should be treated that way.

If your company is already on Dealroom, claim the profile and make it accurate. If you are applying to programs through F6S, complete the company information there instead of creating a hollow profile only for the URL. If an ecosystem map is relevant to your city or sector, add the startup with a description that a stranger can understand.

For an EU-based software company, Speartip belongs in this first group as well. Every approved launch receives a public product page and company page, along with categories, alternatives, browse and search discovery, and a 30-day launch window. The public profile remains after the launch.^6

I would count that as one useful public record. I would not turn it into the beginning of a 150-directory marathon.

The 100-directory pitch solves the wrong problem

There is now a small industry built around SaaS directory submissions.

Current services advertise hundreds of startup and SaaS directories, dofollow filters, domain-rating targets, manual submissions and packages designed to raise the number of referring domains. Some explicitly connect these submissions to AI citations or ChatGPT visibility.^7

The appeal is obvious. Link building is uncertain. Filling forms is certain.

But a backlink plan built around quantity creates a maintenance problem before the company has earned much attention. Product descriptions change. Pricing changes. Categories change. Logos change. The old copy remains scattered across sites the founder may never visit again.

There is also a strategic problem. If fifty links all exist because the founder found fifty submission forms, they tell roughly the same story.

Compare that with five links from different contexts: a startup database, a customer case study, an integration partner, an industry newsletter and a useful tool that another writer chose to cite. The second group says more about the company even before anyone starts discussing SEO metrics.

Google's spam policy is worth keeping in mind here. The problem is not that directories exist. A useful directory is a normal part of the web. The problem begins when links are created primarily to manipulate rankings rather than to help people discover or understand something.^2

A founder does not need to become afraid of links. They need a better filter.

Would this page still be worth creating if the link were nofollow?

If the answer is yes, the listing probably has another reason to exist.

Get the next links from relationships you already have

After the obvious company profiles, I would stop searching for directories for a while.

Look at the relationships around the product.

A design partner may have a customer or partner page. An integration can create a listing in a marketplace or documentation page. An accelerator may publish its cohort. A local startup hub may maintain a member directory. A cloud, payments or development partner may have a showcase for companies building with its technology.

These links are harder to collect in a spreadsheet because they depend on the company you are actually building.

That is also why they are interesting.

Suppose a Dutch logistics SaaS integrates with an established transport-management platform. A public integration page has an obvious purpose. It helps shared customers understand that the two products work together. The backlink is a by-product of useful information.

Or imagine a German HR startup that completed an accelerator in Berlin. The cohort page connects the company with a place, a program and a point in time. Again, the link carries context.

European founders often have more of these opportunities than they notice because the ecosystem is fragmented across cities, countries, languages and sector groups. The European Commission's startup strategy still treats fragmentation and cross-border scaling as problems to solve.^8 For link building, that fragmentation can be useful. A company can have legitimate connections to a local ecosystem, a national industry group and a broader European market at the same time.

Do not manufacture those connections. Document the real ones.

Publish one page that deserves a link

Directory submissions eventually run out.

A useful resource does not.

This is the point where SaaS link building becomes more interesting, because the next backlink can come from something only your company could have published. Instead of asking where you can place the company URL, ask what your company knows that another person might want to reference.

For a payroll product, that could be a maintained table of payroll deadlines across several European countries. For a cybersecurity product, it could be a small scanner or a careful benchmark. For a developer tool, it might be a compatibility matrix, migration guide or open-source utility. For a vertical SaaS, a calculator based on a recurring operational problem can be more useful than another generic blog post.

Ahrefs recommends free tools and original data as link-earning approaches for SaaS, and its own case studies show why: people have a concrete reason to cite a useful resource.^9

The resource does not need to be large.

A founder can spend three weeks writing “The Ultimate Guide to Project Management in 2026” and produce a page that resembles hundreds of others. A small calculator that answers one expensive question may be more useful and easier to recommend.

I would favor specificity, especially in Europe.

A page about “VAT for SaaS” is broad. A maintained explanation of how your product handles reverse-charge VAT for a precise workflow can answer a real buyer question. A generic “European AI statistics” page will compete with research firms. A small dataset collected from your own product, with the methodology explained, can contribute something new.

This is slower than submitting to a directory.

Good. The work creates an asset you control.

Pitch the resource, not the startup

Once the useful page exists, outreach becomes easier to write.

“Hi, we launched a SaaS” gives an editor very little to work with.

“We collected pricing data from 84 European vendors in this category and found a pattern your readers may care about” is a different proposition.

The same principle applies to newsletters, bloggers, trade associations and specialist publications. Give them a reason to inspect one specific page. Do not ask them to care about your funding stage, your enthusiasm or the fact that the founders worked very hard.

This is one place where European companies should use geography intelligently.

An English-language SaaS can still earn links from a German trade publication, a French startup newsletter, a Nordic technology community or a Dutch sector association when the underlying story is relevant. International link building also has practical differences across countries, including language, publisher habits and local expectations.^10

You do not need to pitch all of Europe.

Start where the company already has a credible connection.

A nofollow link can still be a good link

New founders often learn the vocabulary of backlinks before they learn what the links are for.

They start sorting opportunities into dofollow and nofollow columns. The second column looks disappointing.

I would be less rigid.

Google provides several ways for sites to qualify outbound links, including nofollow and sponsored, and publishers decide how they use those attributes.^11 A founder cannot reasonably control every publisher's implementation.

What you can judge is whether the page itself matters.

If a respected industry newsletter sends qualified visitors, I care. If a startup database is used by investors in your market, I care. If a customer names your company on a public case study, I care. If a community page helps a buyer verify that the company exists and belongs to a real ecosystem, I care.

The backlink is one output of that presence.

A young SaaS gets into trouble when it reverses the logic and starts creating presences only because a browser extension displayed a high number next to the domain.

Where Speartip fits for an EU SaaS founder

Speartip should not be your link-building strategy.

It can be one sensible link in it.

Speartip is built for software from EU-based companies. Approved products receive a moderated launch, a public product profile, a company profile, categories, alternatives, and search and browse visibility. Free Launch costs nothing, and the profile stays public after the 30-day launch period.^6

That makes the listing useful for reasons beyond the backlink. A buyer can see what the product does, which company operates it, where that company is based, and how the software is categorized. Trust information can add more context when the vendor supplies it.

If you are building a SaaS in the EU and those facts belong on the public web, submit it.

Then keep going.

Claim the ecosystem profiles that actually matter. Ask a real partner whether there should be an integration page. Turn a repeated customer question into a resource worth citing. Give one specialist publication a reason to mention the work.

The first ten backlinks do not need to look impressive in an SEO report.

They need to make the company less isolated than it was before.

That is a good place to start.

Launch your European software on Speartip.

Footnotes

1. Google Search Central, “Link best practices for Google.”
2. Google Search Central, “Spam Policies for Google Web Search,” section on link spam.
3. Dealroom, “Using Dealroom as a Founder.”
4. StartupBlink, “Add startup.”
5. F6S, startup profiles and programs.
6. Speartip, “Launch European software for free or with Pro.”
7. Examples reviewed include SubmitSaaS, LaunchDirectories and ListMy.Site.
8. European Commission, “EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy.”
9. Ahrefs, “SaaS SEO: The Tried & Tested Guide” and “12 Link Builders Share Strategies That Work.”
10. Ahrefs, “International Link Building: 9 Aspects That Might Surprise You.”
11. Google Search Central, “Qualify your outbound links to Google.”