We analyzed the intrinsic progress of 1,600 SaaS corporations to find the simplest search engine optimization methods in 2024.
This text highlights the bootstrapped SaaS corporations which have acquired essentially the most referring domains over the previous 12 months.
Homegrown corporations usually do not have enormous budgets to spend on advertising, so the methods these small however mighty corporations use to enhance natural progress are: you You too can take inspiration from.
- We used the Ahrefs API to acquire a listing of dwell referring domains for every firm in September 2023 and September 2024.
- Firms have been ranked by the expansion charge of their referring domains relative to their first referring area. We set the minimal beginning threshold for the referring area to 1,000.
- 1,000 referring domains is simply too many, so we reported on referring domains as a substitute of backlinks. many Getting greater than 1,000 backlinks is tough.
| rank | firm | Referring area 2023 | Referring area 2024 | Referring area progress | change | Estimated income |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | elf site | 7,657 | 33,610 | 25,953 | 339% | 8 million {dollars} |
| 2 | Short.io | 5,709 | 18,573 | 12,864 | 225% | $500,000 |
| 3 | gym desk | 1,325 | 3,052 | 1,727 | 130% | $5.5 million |
| 4 | help juice | 4,015 | 8,672 | 4,657 | 116% | 6 million {dollars} |
| 5 | This was also asked | 1,602 | 3,343 | 1,741 | 109% | $500,000 |
| 6 | strip | 2,304 | 4,420 | 2,116 | 92% | $5.5 million |
| 7 | clear scope | 1,883 | 3,580 | 1,697 | 90% | $5.5 million |
| 8 | surfer | 5,815 | 10,899 | 5,084 | 87% | $37.5 million |
| 9 | word tune | 2,877 | 5,347 | 2,470 | 86% | 1 million {dollars} |
| 10 | claudine | 4,818 | 8,919 | 4,101 | 85% | $17.5 million |
| 11 | social insider | 3,264 | 6,007 | 2,743 | 84% | $800,000 |
| 12 | spiff | 8,101 | 14,821 | 6,720 | 83% | 2 million {dollars} |
| 13 | Pentest-Tools.com | 1,543 | 2,779 | 1,236 | 80% | $5.5 million |
| 14 | Canny | 4,411 | 7,675 | 3,264 | 74% | $5.5 million |
| 15 | surf shark | 13,898 | 24,056 | 10,158 | 73% | $20 million |
| 16 | sight valve | 1,232 | 2,093 | 861 | 70% | $500,000 |
| 17 | transparency | 3,496 | 5,900 | 2,404 | 69% | 5 million {dollars} |
| 18 | spy cloud | 1,192 | 1,987 | 795 | 67% | $14 million |
| 19 | Mx toolbox | 10,718 | 17,736 | 7,018 | 65% | 9 million {dollars} |
| 20 | shift base | 1,077 | 1,780 | 703 | 65% | $17.5 million |
| twenty one | Signed | 1,113 | 1,839 | 726 | 65% | $500,000 |
| twenty two | rem list | 1,613 | 2,654 | 1,041 | 65% | 6 million {dollars} |
| twenty three | site checker | 5,938 | 9,732 | 3,794 | 64% | $6.1 million |
| twenty 4 | Sabikal | 1,272 | 2,070 | 798 | 63% | $5.5 million |
| twenty 5 | status brew | 2,750 | 4,470 | 1,720 | 63% | $14 million |
| 26 | wise pops | 1,291 | 2,086 | 795 | 62% | 3 million {dollars} |
| 27 | glass node | 5,041 | 8,123 | 3,082 | 61% | $5.5 million |
| 28 | device atlas | 2,765 | 4,442 | 1,677 | 61% | $19 million |
| 29 | Float.com | 1,021 | 1,638 | 617 | 60% | $5.5 million |
| 30 | RTINGS.com | 8,601 | 13,779 | 5,178 | 60% | $6.3 million |
| 31 | small pdf | 13,953 | 22,264 | 8,311 | 60% | $17.5 million |
| 32 | Clockify | 6,109 | 9,733 | 3,624 | 59% | $5.5 million |
| 33 | mail trap | 3,162 | 4,991 | 1,829 | 58% | $5.5 million |
| 34 | Bamboo HR | 8,511 | 13,410 | 4,899 | 58% | $237.8 million |
| 35 | Set up the app | 13,178 | 20,696 | 7,518 | 57% | $15 million |
| 36 | Web CEO | 2,495 | 3,891 | 1,396 | 56% | $25 million |
| 37 | Visme | 10,354 | 16,135 | 5,781 | 56% | 1 million {dollars} |
| 38 | up lead | 1,823 | 2,833 | 1,010 | 55% | $17.5 million |
| 39 | slick plan | 1,345 | 2,086 | 741 | 55% | 1 million {dollars} |
| 40 | jotto form | 45,485 | 69,553 | 24,068 | 53% | $21 million |
| 41 | Wither | 2,013 | 3,070 | 1,057 | 53% | $5.5 million |
| 42 | Ahrefs | 52,536 | 80,036 | 27,500 | 52% | 100 million {dollars} |
| 43 | plausible analysis | 6,084 | 9,251 | 3,167 | 52% | $5.5 million |
| 44 | creatively | 7,816 | 11,844 | 4,028 | 52% | $12 million |
| 45 | home run | 2,040 | 3,068 | 1,028 | 50% | $38.4 million |
| 46 | Yardi | 1,928 | 2,880 | 952 | 49% | 5.5 billion {dollars} |
| 47 | infinite campus | 1,029 | 1,534 | 505 | 49% | $56 million |
| 48 | file mail | 3,829 | 5,694 | 1,865 | 49% | 1 million {dollars} |
| 49 | live agent | 4,740 | 7,034 | 2,294 | 48% | 5 million {dollars} |
| 50 | semaphore | 2,727 | 4,025 | 1,298 | 48% | 4 million {dollars} |
Wish to know the way just about each enterprise builds one of the best backlinks? This is find out how to do it with Ahrefs.
I normally begin with overview report web site explorer Get a fast overview of your web site’s referring area progress. Here’s a chart for our primary firm, Elfsight.
Spectacular! Then what I exploit is anchor By making a report, you may rapidly perceive the kinds of hyperlinks which are being constructed. Are all of them mentions of your model, hyperlinks to weblog content material, or free instruments?
Within the case of Elfsight, the vast majority of referring domains (over 60%) have anchor textual content containing that phrase. widget:


a few of these hyperlinks, it is clear that the corporate provides a free web site widget that additionally features a hyperlink to Elfsight.


On some web sites, anchor textual content will not be very outstanding. That is Referring area SaaS firm reviews excluded from this text. At first look, they appear to be doing effectively. Final 12 months we gained over 100,00 new backlinks.


Nevertheless, if you happen to take a more in-depth take a look at the most typical anchor texts, you will see that they’re nearly all spam hyperlinks (promoting a Korean enterprise therapeutic massage).
Such spam hyperlinks are finest hyperlink filter. By default, the “Finest Hyperlinks” filter shows solely the next hyperlinks:
- comply with me,
- In web page content material,
- For referring domains with a DR of no less than 30,
- Estimated natural site visitors to the web page is no less than 500/min.
You probably have totally different standards for outlining the “finest” hyperlinks, you may customise the filters your self.


With the filter utilized, run the next: anchor Please report it once more so we are able to filter out all these spam hyperlinks and get a clearer image of the standard hyperlinks this web site will get. A lot much less:


Lastly, I like to go to Finest by hyperlink Create a report back to see which particular person pages are getting one of the best hyperlinks.
This is an instance from Clearscope, one other prime 50 web site. Except for frequent “utility” pages like the house web page, pricing pages, and sign-in pages, essentially the most linked pages are all weblog posts about thought management, comparable to opinions, predictions, and analysis research.


Not all corporations supply a ton of free instruments and widgets that will help you construct hyperlinks, however thought management content material can This is a link building strategy that is easy for other businesses to copy.
final thoughts
We plan to share more details on these data analyzes in the coming weeks. Would you like your company to be included in the next analysis? Fill out this short Google form.

