How to Find the Right Websites for SaaS Outreach: A Practical Prospecting Guide

Prospecting eats more time than any other part of outreach, and it’s usually the step teams shortcut first — which is exactly why so many campaigns end up pitching irrelevant sites. A slower, more deliberate prospecting process almost always pays for itself in reply and placement rates, and it’s the same judgment a middleman connecting SaaS brands to publishers applies before any pitch goes out.

Start with competitor backlink analysis

Before building a prospect list from scratch, pull the backlink profiles of two or three direct competitors. Any site that’s already linked to a competitor has demonstrated willingness to cover your exact category, which makes it a warmer, higher-probability prospect than a cold discovery.

Filter this list for sites that link to multiple competitors (not just one, which could be a fluke) and that look like genuine editorial placements rather than paid directories.

Google search operators worth knowing

A handful of search operators consistently surface real prospecting opportunities:

• "best [category] tools" OR "best [category] software" — finds roundup and resource pages
• intitle:"resources" [your niche] — finds curated resource pages
• "[competitor] vs" -site:competitor.com — finds comparison content you could be included in
• "write for us" [your niche] — finds guest post opportunities (vet quality carefully, this also surfaces low-quality sites)
• "[category] integrations" — finds integration directories and partner pages

Industry publications and SaaS-specific blogs

Every SaaS vertical has a handful of publications that cover it seriously — not general tech news, but outlets whose entire audience is people evaluating tools in that specific category. These are usually the highest-value prospects because relevance is already established; the work is finding them (often through competitor backlinks, industry newsletters, or communities where your ICP actually spends time) and building a real relationship, not a one-off pitch.

Marketing and technology websites more broadly

Beyond niche-specific publications, broader marketing and technology sites can be relevant if their audience genuinely overlaps with your buyer — a general marketing blog that regularly covers martech and workflow tools is a reasonable prospect for most B2B SaaS products even without being hyper-specific to your exact category.

Website quality checks before pitching

A quick quality pass before adding a site to the outreach list saves wasted effort later:

• Has the site published new content in the last 60–90 days?
• Do existing outbound links look editorial, or does the site clearly sell placements?
• Is there a real author or editor to contact, not just a generic “contact us” form?
• Does organic traffic show a stable or growing trend, not a site that’s clearly been abandoned or penalized?

Relevance checks

Beyond raw quality, relevance needs its own filter: does this site’s existing content actually cover your category or something close to it? A high-quality site that’s completely off-topic for your product is still a poor prospect — relevance and quality are two separate filters, and a prospect needs to pass both.

Traffic and authority evaluation, without over-relying on one metric

No single metric tells the whole story. A reasonable evaluation combines: estimated organic traffic (is there a real audience), a domain authority proxy like DR or DA (a general sense of trust), and a manual look at whether the site’s actual content quality matches what the metrics suggest. Sites that look strong on metrics but read as thin or templated content are usually not worth prioritizing.

Building a repeatable prospecting system

The teams that keep finding good opportunities month after month aren’t re-starting prospecting from zero each time — they maintain a living, segmented list (by SaaS sub-niche, by tactic type, by relationship status) that gets added to continuously as new sites are discovered through competitor research, content discovery, and referrals from existing publisher relationships.

FAQs

What’s the fastest way to build an initial SaaS outreach prospect list?

Competitor backlink analysis, since it surfaces sites already proven to cover your exact category rather than requiring discovery from scratch.

Are “write for us” pages reliable prospecting sources?

They can surface real opportunities but also attract a lot of low-quality sites accepting any submission — always run a quality and relevance check before pitching, don’t treat the presence of a “write for us” page as a quality signal on its own.

How much should Domain Rating matter in prospect selection?

It should be one input among several, not the primary filter — relevance and genuine audience overlap tend to matter more for SaaS outreach outcomes than raw DR.

Should the same prospecting list be reused across multiple campaigns?

The underlying research and relationships should be maintained and expanded over time, not rebuilt from scratch — a maintained, growing list compounds in value with each campaign.

The takeaway

Good SaaS outreach prospecting starts with competitor backlink analysis, uses targeted search operators to find roundups and resource pages, and applies both a quality and a relevance filter before any pitch goes out. Treating the prospect list as a living asset, not a one-time spreadsheet, is what makes future campaigns faster and more effective.