Testimonial link building is the practice of writing testimonials for products and services your company actually uses. Vendors like to publish customer quotes with the customer's name, logo and sometimes a link, and some feature customers in case studies. For a B2B SaaS company with a stack of tools, this can produce a handful of links from relevant sites. It stays legitimate only while the endorsement is honest: inventing praise for products you do not use to collect links is deceptive and a link scheme by another name.
Need help with SEO?
Comppound runs SEO and AI search for SaaS companies. We plan what to publish, produce it with AI, and every page passes automated checks, and a person reviews samples and anything high-risk.
- Published to your site and tracked in Search Console
- One person answers for your account
- Plans from $400 a month, terms from 3 months
How to do it
List the tools your team relies on and has a real view about. Offer a specific testimonial that says what problem the tool solved, which is more useful to the vendor than generic praise. Ask whether they feature customers, and say you would be glad to be named. Many will link; some will not, and some will add nofollow. Take the visibility either way.
Beyond the link
Partner and integration ecosystems work the same way. If you integrate with a tool, a listing in its marketplace or a joint case study is usually worth more than a testimonial link, because it reaches people already using that tool.
Example
A specific quote to a vendor
A fictional billing platform, Ledgerline, sends a short testimonial to the documentation tool its engineers use, explaining how it cut the time to publish API changes. The vendor adds it to its customers page with Ledgerline's logo and a link to its homepage.
Common mistakes
Endorsing tools you do not use
Fake testimonials mislead the vendor's buyers and reflect on your brand.
Making the link a condition
Asking for a link in exchange for praise turns an endorsement into a link trade. Offer the testimonial and let them decide.
Frequently Asked Questions
A genuine testimonial that a vendor chooses to link is fine. Trading testimonials for links at scale, or writing fake ones, is the kind of manipulation the link spam policy covers.
They are usually few and come from a customers page, so think of them as a small bonus alongside relevance and brand exposure.
Keep reading
- Link Building: Link building is the work of getting other relevant sites to link to yours, by creating things worth citing and asking the right people to cite them.
- Natural Link: A natural link is one that appears without manipulation: someone linked because they wanted to, not because of payment, trades or automation.
- Integration Partner Links: Integration partner links come from the platforms your product connects to, such as app marketplaces, partner directories and integration docs.
- Co-Marketing Links: Co-marketing links come from joint campaigns with partner companies, such as shared reports, webinars and guides that both sides publish.
- Anchor Text Distribution: Anchor text distribution is the mix of words other sites use when linking to you. A natural mix is mostly brand names and URLs, not repeated exact-match keywords.
- Backlink Analysis: Backlink analysis is reviewing which sites link to a domain, how they link and why, to understand its link profile and find realistic link opportunities.
- Backlink quality: Backlink quality is how much a link is worth, judged by relevance, editorial intent and the trustworthiness of the linking site.
- Broken Link Building: Broken link building means finding links on other sites that point to dead pages, then suggesting your relevant page as a working replacement.
