Backlinks for a new SaaS site: what Google's docs say

A new SaaS site has the same problem on day one. Nobody links to it. The temptation is to fix that fast, and the internet is full of tricks for it.

So I went back to what Google has actually written. Everything below is quoted from Google’s own pages, with the date each one was last updated. Where Google says nothing, I say so.

What counts as link spam

Google’s spam policies (last updated 28 August 2026) define it in one line: “Link spam is the practice of creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings.”

Three of the listed examples matter for a young site:

• “links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites”
• “Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking”
• “Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites”

Read those again. None of them bans a link. Each one is about a link made to move a ranking and for nothing else.

Anchor text

Google’s page on crawlable links (last updated 10 December 2025) is the clearest source. “Good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it’s on and to the page it links to.”

It adds that the words before and after a link matter, so you should think about the sentence as a whole, and that you shouldn’t chain links next to each other. It also reminds you that keyword stuffing is a violation of the spam policies.

Notice what’s missing. There’s no ratio of branded to keyword anchors, no safe percentage, no phrase like “exact match”. None of the Google pages I read gives a number, so be wary of anyone who does.

Where on the page does a link count most?

Google doesn’t publish a rule. The nearest thing is a patent, the “reasonable surfer” model (US 7,716,225, granted in 2010). It describes weighing a link by how likely someone is to click it, using features like where it sits and the words around it.

A patent shows what Google filed, not what runs today. I found no Google page that says either way. Comments from Google staff on footer and sidebar links exist, but I only found them as recaps of talks, so treat them as reported and not as policy.

My own rule is simple. Put links in the body, inside a sentence about the topic. That’s where a reader would click, and it’s where a link makes sense with or without a search engine.

rel values

Google’s page on qualifying outbound links (last updated 10 December 2025) gives three values. Mark “advertisements or paid placements” with sponsored. Mark user-generated links, such as comments and forum posts, with ugc. Use nofollow “when other values don’t apply” and you’d rather Google not associate your site with the page.

The crawlable-links page adds one more line: “Use nofollow only when you don’t trust the source, and not for every external link on your site.”

Linking between sites you own

I couldn’t find a Google page that covers it. The closest thing is a reply from John Mueller on Bluesky, on 14 January 2026. Someone asked about a business linking its related brands to each other. He answered: “This seems pretty common, I don’t see a problem with it when done at reasonable scale.”

Set that beside the spam policy’s “partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking” and you get a workable line. A few editorial links, inside posts that are about the subject, are normal. A partner grid or a sitewide footer block is the pattern Google lists as spam.

Some posts on this blog link to Axelize, a product I also build. I say so next to the link, they’re ordinary followed links, and I keep them to a few per post.

What these links won’t do

A link from a site you own is not the same thing as someone else linking to you. It helps a reader get from one page to the next, and it helps a crawler find the page. That’s worth having. It isn’t authority from outside.

The slower work is the work that moves things: being listed where your buyers look, getting written about, and having customers mention you.

Questions people ask