Foundational Links Explained

Foundational links are the cornerstone of your backlink profile, the first initial backlinks that are built when your website is brand new. They are an essential step in every SEO campaign and allow your site to rank for low competition keywords and most importantly: your brand name.

Backlinks in general serve as votes of confidence from other websites, signalling to Google that your content is relevant and trustworthy. When a reputable website links to yours, search engines will view this as a signal of quality.

By building foundational links, you’ll be able to improve your website’s visibility and credibility on search engines. This results in improved rankings for your first pieces of content, your homepage and landing pages early on in your SEO journey.

It’s also important to note that the anchor text used in foundational links should follow a logical structure to establish your website as a topical authority in your niche. The focus keyword of your homepage is typically a high competition keyword that reflects your overall business, while the focus keywords of landing pages and initial blogs will typically be lower competition, since they’re easier to rank for. When selecting anchor text in foundational links, you should choose a variety of branded, keyword-rich and navigational (click here, learn more, etc.) text.

What’s the difference between foundational backlinks and regular backlinks?

While we’ll jump into the most common types of foundational links later in this blog, you’ll notice many similarities between foundational and regular backlinks. The main difference is the time when the backlinks are built. Foundational links are built at the start of an SEO campaign, often coinciding with a website launch or a rebrand. Standard backlink building tactics can be used to build foundational links, although there are types of foundational links that you won’t be using later on in SEO campaigns as well.

Types of Foundational Links

Having a diverse backlink profile is crucial for SEO because it accelerates the time it takes for Google to consider your website credible. When search engines crawl and index websites, they take into consideration the quality, quantity and relevance of backlinks pointing to a site. A diverse backlink profile will indicate that a website is being referenced by a variety of reputable sources.

Building foundational links from a variety of sources will help your chances of ranking early on in your SEO efforts.

Here are the 4 types of foundational links that we like to build for clients:

Business Directories: Directory backlinks don’t always pass link equity, but when they do, they really do. This is because most business directories are established websites with robust backlink profiles and authority on search engines. Business directories are also location or niche specific, which can help build your website’s trustworthiness. For example, if you were running a SaaS, it’d make sense to create profiles on software review sites like G2 Crowd and Capterra.

Social Media Profiles: While social signals are not a ranking factor, it’s still important to claim your brand’s social media profiles at the start of an SEO campaign. While social media profile links won’t really move the needle when it comes to ranking for your focus keywords, it will flood the page 1 results for your branded terms. For example, if you search for “Spacebar Collective” on Google, our Linkedin Page and Twitter/X Profile are among the first results.

Guest Blogs: Writing new content as guest contributions for established blogs is a great way to build foundational links because you have complete control over the anchor text used. And as we’ve already mentioned, anchor text is important in building yourself up as a topical authority. Guest blogging is the link-building tactic you’ll likely continue well beyond your initial foundational links, as it’s one of the most consistent ways to build powerful backlinks.

Link Insertions (Niche Edits): Unlike guest blogs, link insertions are where your link is edited into existing content that’s already published on someone else’s website. Some would argue that link insertions are more powerful than guest blogs because Google has already indexed these pages and already ranks them for keywords in your niche.This is especially true if the page you’re getting a link insertion from is getting meaningful search traffic. You’ll not only earn a relevant backlink to your site, but you’ll also gain referral traffic from their article. 

3 Link-Building Tactics for New Websites

Citation Building: Citations are any mentions of your business details and link to your website on business directories, review sites and social media platforms. These are considered foundational links because you build them just once when you launch your website. If you’re a brick and mortar, you might want to look into local citation building, which will help your business appear on Google Maps, Apple Maps and other local search engines. If you’re a startup, you’ll want to build citations on websites like CrunchBase and G2.

Cold Email Outreach: Sending cold emails is one of the most effective ways to build backlinks from guest blogs and link insertions. It all starts with link prospecting, the process of identifying websites most likely to accept guest contributions. Once you have your list of target websites, you’ll need to find contact email addresses using tools like Apollo.io. From here, you can use email outreach software to send out your cold emails and a small % of the people you contact will accept your guest blog content.

Competitor Backlink Analysis: Checking competitor backlinks will allow you to understand what’s already working for websites in your niche and give you target websites that are up for collaboration. If your competitors have built links from a site, so can you!

When Should You Build Foundational Links?

Website Launch: As soon as your website goes live, you should be thinking about building foundational links. In fact, if you can accelerate your website launch, this would be beneficial because SEO takes time and there is a time cost involved with ranking. The sooner you rank, the sooner you can earn organic search traffic. 

Website Rebrand: Since many of the foundational links you build will help with branded terms, it makes sense to focus on updating your foundational links when going through a rebrand. You’ll want to make sure that all citations have up-to-date information. If your rebrand also includes a new domain and 301 redirects from your old site to the new one, you’ll want to make sure to update as many of your foundational links as possible to the new website. While a 301 redirect will help pass link equity from old to new, there is a chance that some of your website’s authority will be lost in the process. Updating backlinks safeguards you from this potential loss in site migration.

Before an SEO Campaign: If you didn’t build foundational backlinks at your website launch, this is the time to do it. Make sure you have a strong foundation before putting resources into SEO as a growth channel to ensure the best odds of ranking on Google. 

Outsourcing Foundational Link Building

Outsourcing link building is ideal if you don’t have the time or expertise to build backlinks in the early stages of SEO. There are 2 categories of foundational links you should consider outsourcing, each for different reasons.

Citation Building: While you should be able to handle citation building on your own, outsourcing citation building to an agency often results in a higher volume of citations and it’s a massive time saver. Building up profiles in business directories can be a time consuming task, so hiring an agency is a great option if you’re swamped with other work around the time of your website launch.

If you’re interested in letting us handle your citation building campaign, contact us today for a custom quote.

Guest Blogs and Link Insertions: While these are considered some of the most powerful foundational links you can build, they’re also the most difficult ones to build. If you don’t have experience building backlinks through cold outreach or experience producing blog content, this is best left to the pros. For those ready to pull the trigger on a campaign, we have 3 tiers of backlink building packages to choose from.

The Benefits of Outsourcing Link Building

If you’re just getting your feet wet in the SEO game, you should really consider outsourcing your link building efforts to an SEO agency that knows what they’re doing.

Here’s a few reasons why you should consider outsourcing link building:

Time and Cost Savings: Outsourcing will free up your resources so that you can focus on more pressing aspects of your business. Outsourcing is also more cost-effective than handling things in-house since you don’t have to invest into hiring, training and managing additional staff.

Efficiency: Experienced link builders can leverage existing relationships with website admins to earn more powerful backlinks than you’d be able to on your own, in a shorter time than normal as well. Building these types of connections and relationships from scratch can often be a shot in the dark. It’s a complex process that is inconsistent at best if it’s your first time doing it. SEO agencies have processes in place to make the process push-button, simple and painless.

Risk Mitigation: Link building can be a complex and time-consuming process, one where mistakes can have real-world negative consequences on your business. If you build the wrong types of backlinks or from the wrong types of websites, this could result in an SEO penalty on your website. These can be a real pain to recover from, requiring vast amounts of resources and time. By outsourcing to professional link builders, you can minimise the risk of these costly mistakes. This ensures that your backlink profile remains strong, compliant with Google guidelines and resilient to future link spam updates that Google implements.

Scalability: When outsourcing link building to a pro, you can easily scale the campaign up or down depending on your needs and available budget. This kind of flexibility allows you to optimise your SEO campaigns on the fly. If you build links in-house, it’s much harder to make these kinds of adjustments since you have staff who are locked into contracts.

Quicker SEO Results: Working with a specialised team results in stronger results in terms of both quantity and quality of backlinks earned. This leads to stronger search engine rankings, increased organic traffic and improved conversions on your website.

Why Link Building Matters for SEO

Producing new pages (ie. blog content) for your website can be seen as widening the net of total keywords you can rank for.

Backlink building is like reeling the net in, improving rankings of individual pages and keywords.

Metaphors are nice and all for understanding concepts, but you want data as well, right?

Here’s a study by ahrefs that shows there’s a positive correlation between backlink volume and rankings on Google.

Build more backlinks, rank higher. SEO doesn’t have to be complicated. KISS.

How Much Does an In-House Link Builder Cost?

According to GlassDoor, the average link builder makes $66,379 per year. On average, you can expect an in-house link builder to bring you 13-15 high quality backlinks per month. In annual terms, that’s a range of 156-180 backlinks per year at a rate of $368 to $425 per backlink.

If you took that same $66,379 budget and put it towards outsourcing link building to an experienced SEO agency, you’d build more backlinks of the same or better quality since the average rate would be lower. 

For example, if you outsourced your backlink building to us at Spacebar Collective, we only charge $300 per backlink so you’d get 221 backlinks for the same price. That’s an additional 41-65 backlinks you’re losing out on by link building in-house!

Preparing Your Site for a Backlink Campaign

According to John Mueller in a reddit comment, Google finds it hard to call a site authoritative after 30 articles. This means that without a base library of content, it’s going to be difficult to rank for valuable keywords, regardless of your link building efforts.

That’s why we recommend first building out your base library of content, at least 30 blog articles that position your website as a topical authority of a subject. This will help strengthen your odds of improving rankings as you build backlinks towards your content and money pages.

On top of working towards becoming a topical authority on a subject, here are some other things we consider pre-requisite to link building efforts:

• Indexability: Is your website visible to Google and being indexed properly? Try submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console and fix any errors it gives you (if at all).
• Accessibility: Accessibility compliance will make your website available for everyone, and in turn, make it easier for search engine crawlers to understand as well. Since Google puts weight on the user experience, this is a crucial aspect of SEO that doesn’t get discussed often enough.
• Easy Navigation: Every page on your website should be accessible within 3 clicks. That is to say, your menus should be logical connections to everything you have to offer. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to get a visualisation of your website’s pages to fix any navigation issues.
• Fix Technical Issues: Have a strong technical SEO foundation. Page load speed is especially important for the user experience and should be prioritised before backlink building.

What to Look for in a Link Builder

When shopping around for a link builder to outsource your off-page SEO efforts to, it’s crucial that you ask the right questions. We’ve identified 3 key areas that you’ll want to dive into before trusting your backlink budget to a link builder.

Proven Experience: Ask to see case studies of successful link building campaigns or at the very least, screenshots of results they’ve achieved in the past. It’s also important to ask if the link builder has relevant experience, so ask if they’ve earned links within your specific industry in the past. This is important because building backlinks in different niches may require different strategies, especially if you’re in an industry notoriously difficult to build links for like finance or cannabis.

Pricing: Not too high and not too low. You’re looking for the Goldilocks of backlink building. If a link builder prices their backlinks too low, it’s unlikely they’re doing things above board. If a link builder prices their backlinks too high, it’s likely they’re gouging you for an absurd profit margin. Don’t trust anyone selling quality backlinks for under $100 or average backlinks for over $500. At the lowball, you’re going to wind up with some sketchy backlinks. At the high end, you’re better off looking at slightly cheaper options. The most reputable link builders will charge somewhere between $250 and $400 per backlink.

Transparency: Since low quality backlinks can actually hurt your SEO, you should seek link builders who are transparent about their operations. How exactly are they getting backlinks? You should understand their process at a basic level, from link prospecting to content production. Transparent operations are also a must-have when outsourcing link building. Ideally, link builders should disclose which websites they’re in talks with to secure link placements so that you can do your due diligence and approve which ones will actually get produced.

Professional Backlink Building Services

There are 2 pricing structures for backlink building services: monthly retainers and à la carte per link. Monthly retainers are great for ongoing SEO efforts, while paying per link is better suited if you have a specific number of backlinks you want to build. 

Managed Link Building Subscriptions: Paying for link building on a subscription basis is ideal if you want consistent results over the long-term. Agencies or freelance link builders will commit to building a minimum amount of links every month for a monthly subscription fee. When spread out over the course of a year or several years, the savings from this payment model can be massive. Working on a monthly subscription also allows the link builder time to better understand your brand voice, build more contextually-relevant backlinks and fine tune the campaign over time.

If you’re interested in a monthly link building subscription, contact us today and we’ll get you a quote that fits your specific needs.

Paying Per Backlink: If you don’t have complete buy-in from the leadership at your company to tackle SEO as a growth channel, paying per backlink is a great option because you can treat it as an experiment before committing a larger budget.

For those that are ready to tackle outsourcing link building today, we have 3 tiers of backlink packages available on our backlink building service page.

SaaS Backlink Building Strategies

When doing SEO for SaaS, it’s important to have consistent means of building backlinks. Without that, you’ll find it difficult to outrank competitors, especially in competitive software categories.

For example, if you want to rank for “SEO tools”, you’ll be up against some tough competition. In this post, we’ll give an overview of how to build backlinks for SaaS companies.

Software Review Websites

When you’re just starting out, software review sites are a great way to build foundational backlinks. You can submit your product to sites like Capterra, G2, and TrustPilot, which will help give your rankings a boost. Make sure you take the time to fill out each site’s listing completely and accurately, as this will improve your chances of being accepted.

To get the most out of these listings, be sure to include links back to your site in the “Website” field. You can also include additional information in the “About” section, such as a brief description of your product and how it helps users. Some platforms will allow you to include separate links to product demos as well as pricing pages.

If you have any industry awards or accolades, make sure to list them here as well. These will help build your product’s credibility and increase the likelihood that users will take your listing seriously.

Creating Linkable Content

Before you start putting serious efforts into backlink building, it’s a great idea to build a base library of linkable content first. Normally people will think of linkable assets as the typical link magnets like infographics and whitepapers, but what I mean is that you should have content that can be easily linked to in anchor text.

The most consistent way to build backlinks for SaaS companies is through guest blogging, so you’ll want to have blog content on your own website that can be linked to in a natural, conversational way through your guest blog content. Without a strong base library of content, you’ll find yourself struggling to find natural-looking anchor text in the content you produce. It’s important to create a versatile and varied library so that your anchors are easy to insert into content for different types of websites.

If you’re just beginning your blog, a good starting point would be to publish at least 1 blog for each category your site is going to cover. This way, you’ll be able to pitch guest posts to blogs that cover each of these topics right off the bat.

For example, if your SaaS was a WhatsApp CRM for Shopify merchants like Zoko, your blog categories could look something like this:

• eCommerce
• Customer Service
• Sales
• Shopify
• WhatsApp

By producing a blog for each of these categories, you’ll have a strong, foundational base ‘library’ of anchor text to choose from when producing your guest blog content.

Guest Post Backlink Funnel

Link Prospecting

Link prospecting is the process of finding target websites that are likely to give a backlink to your website. In this case, we’re focusing solely on websites that are most likely to accept guest blog content.

Websites that are most likely to accept your guest post are ones that have already published guest submissions in the past.

After you’ve built up a list of target websites, the next step in link prospecting is to find contact email addresses for your outreach.

How to Manually Find Contact Email Addresses

• Skim the company website’s header, footer, about and contact pages.
• Check the company’s Facebook Page in the About tab.
• Check the company’s LinkedIn Company profile.
• Check the company’s YouTube channel.

You can also find contact information using search tools like Instantly, Hunter or Apollo.io. While these platforms don’t always have contact emails on file, their databases are quite robust and you’ll usually be able to find what you’re looking for. Email finder tools work best for larger, more established companies, as it’s more likely they have public-facing contact information available.

Writing the Pitch

Finding contact information is one thing, but crafting a guest blog pitch that actually converts is another story. But there’s one thing every effective pitch has in common: leverage. 

When you’re writing a guest blog pitch, your ultimate goal is to get the publication to say yes. In order to do that, you need to show them how publishing your article will benefit them. 

Think about it from their perspective: why would they want to publish your article? Is it because it will help them grow their traffic? Is it because it will position them as an authority in their industry? Is it because it will introduce their audience to a new product or service? 

Whatever the reason may be, make sure you spell it out in your pitch. The more specific you can be, the better.

Including links to your previous work is also a good idea. As you might already know, social proof works wonders in driving conversions. This will give the publication an idea of your writing style and help them determine whether or not you’re a good fit for their site. 

Tailoring Your Pitch

Now that you know what needs to be included in a guest blog pitch, it’s time to start tailoring your pitch to specific publications. 

The first step is to visit the website of the publication you’d like to contribute to and take a look at their existing content. This will give you an idea of their writing style, tone, and overall theme. 

From there, you can start to tailor your pitch. The goal is to make it as specific as possible while still demonstrating how your article will benefit their audience. 

Here’s a guest post pitch example: 

Hello {{firstName}}, 

I was recently reading the {{companyName}} blog and noticed that you regularly publish articles on the topic of SEO. I’ve been working in the SEO industry for the past few years and have a lot of valuable insights to share. 

In particular, I’d like to write an article on the topic of backlinks. I think this would be valuable to your audience because X,Y, and Z. 

If you’re interested, I’d be happy to send over a few examples of my previous work. 

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you soon. 

This pitch is specific, demonstrates how the article will benefit the publication’s audience, and includes links to the writer’s previous work. 

Key Takeaways

When it comes to guest blogging, quality trumps quantity every time. It’s better to have a handful of high-quality backlinks than a bunch of low-quality ones.

To recap, here’s how backlink building for SaaS companies is done effectively:

• Guest blogging on relevant websites is the one of the most consistent backlink building methods for SaaS companies.
• The first step in guest blogging is finding contact information for the website’s editor or author.
• Email finder tools like Hunter or Apollo.io can be helpful in finding contact information.
• The second step is to write a pitch tailored to the publication you’re targeting.
• Your pitch should demonstrate how publishing your article will benefit the website.
• Including links to your previous work can also help convince the publication to say yes.